📸: Kat, PhD
The Washington Capitals made it 57 beautiful, peaceful games into their season without demeaning themselves to visit the Philadelphia Flyers.
The Flyers scored the only goal of the first period, Owen Tippett’s after a keen pass from Travis Sanheim. Carl Grundstrum got a lucky bounce off Jakob Chychrun to make it 2-0, but a shorthanded effort from Aliaksei Protas brought the Caps within one goal with one period left to go.
Anthony Beauvillier scrambled in front of the Flyers net to tie the game three minutes into the third. With five minutes left in regulation, Jamie Drysdale’s shot from way out restored Philly’s lead. Rasmus Ristolainen got the empty-netter. The Caps couldn’t muster another comeback.
Caps lose. Win streak over.
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It’s demented that the Caps and Flyers hadn’t played each other until February. I nearly forgot they existed from Halloween until Presidents’ Day, and it was actually kind of pleasant.
Ryan Leonard drew a trip from Nicolas Deslauriers in the first period. That was the 24th penalty he has drawn during five-on-five play this season. A comprehensive list of the players who have drawn more, using the rarely seen nested recap bullets:
Mikko Rantanen
Matthew Schaefer
Macklin Celebrini
(He’s tied with McDavid.)
I whined so much about the Capitals not getting now-Flyer Matvei Michkov in the 2023 draft. The guy they got instead was Leonard. He’s better than Michkov, or at least he will be by next year.. One of the best things in hockey is when you’re wrong but it’s all good. (An even better thing is when you’re right and it’s all good.)
From the Ashford Meadow Tourney LLC out-of-town scoreboard, this person conducted the perfect social experiment to evaluate the Michkov-Tocchet schism. Read the reply.
Unlucky own-goal for Jakob Chychrun, but still not as bad as Tony DeAngelo’s yesterday. Hard to imagine a more cringeworthy play by a Caps defen– waitaminute here comes JC74!
In the second period, John Carlson held the puck behind the goal line, waiting for the right moment to start the breakout. Fans at “Xfinity Mobile Arena” (🤮) deemed Carlson had waited too long. When Carlson finally made his pass, that puck went promptly to a dude in orange.
Aliaksei Protas is Washington’s best penalty killer by a lot, but hadn’t scored a shorthanded goal all season. This perfect drive up the ice with Anthony Beauvillier earned him his first and his club its second. They are no longer in a four-way tie for last place.
With that assist and the goal of his own, Anthony Beauvillier had a monster game. It’s just the second multi-point game of his season, which says a lot about the season.
Marty Fehervary took a spill alongside Trevor Zegras during a third-period penalty kill. Fehervary wasn’t able to get back in position before Jamie Drysdale’s shot hit the back of the net.
Here’s Flyers goalie Dan Vladar‘s last ten games: LWWWLLLLLL. Naturally he was Dominik Hašek out there on Tuesday. He got away with a brazen delay of game in the waning minutes.
Spencer Carbery made a bold move: playing call-up Clay Stevenson back-to-back after that win over the Isles.
I’m not going to call him Mud. You could not pay me.
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HockeyViz says the Caps’s playoff hopes dropped about 10 percentage points from this regulation loss. And against a team that has basically given up on its season. After three encouraging wins in a row, losing these two points to Philadelphia feels like an outsized setback.
They need a win against Barry Trotz’s (for now) Predators on Thursday.