{"id":219980,"date":"2025-10-12T20:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T20:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/219980\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T20:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T20:57:07","slug":"ryan-leonard-scores-first-career-nhl-goal-on-an-actual-goalie-in-capitals-win-over-islanders-i-know-im-capable-of-doing-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/219980\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Leonard scores first career NHL goal on an actual goalie in Capitals win over Islanders: \u2018I know I\u2019m capable of doing it\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ryan Leonard scored his first NHL goal into an empty net last April, the same day that Alex Ovechkin tied Wayne Gretzky for the league\u2019s all-time goals record<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While the moment was special \u2014 Gretzky congratulated Leonard personally<\/a> \u2014 and the 20-year-old winger scored twice in the preseason, Leonard had yet to beat an actual NHL goalie in a regular-season game until besting Islanders netminder Ilya Sorokin Saturday night on Long Island.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, it was going in during the preseason,\u201d Leonard said postgame. \u201cI know I\u2019m capable of doing it. It\u2019s great to see it go in, though.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leonard\u2019s goal, which ended up being the game-winner against New York, came at the 9:50 mark of the second period just as a Capitals power play expired. After a crazy net-front scramble, Jakob Chychrun recycled the puck and found Leonard in the high slot for a wicked wrister that deflected past Sorokin.<\/p>\n

Leonard ended the night with his goal, two shots, five shot attempts, three individual scoring chances, one individual high-danger chance, and three hits. Head coach Spencer Carbery lined Leonard up on the team\u2019s third line for a second straight game, playing him with Hendrix Lapierre and Anthony Beauvillier.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love playing with those two,\u201d Leonard said. \u201cThey\u2019re very easy to read off of, so going out there makes my job easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leonard played just 10:01 of ice time in the win, but Carbery admitted that the lack of additional time on ice was down to just situational coaching. Overall, the Capitals\u2019 bench boss thought Leonard was effective in the 4-2 win.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought he was good,\u201d Carbery said. \u201cTheir line gets lost a little bit in the shuffle, and it\u2019s because there\u2019s some young guys on that line that I\u2019m protecting late in the game when we\u2019ve got to find a way to get a win under our belt early in the season. But I thought he was good.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, obviously didn\u2019t play a ton in the third period, but he\u2019s doing good things. Each and every game, he\u2019s doing two, three, four things that are really, really high end. He\u2019s making something happen. There\u2019s mistakes involved in there, but that\u2019s natural for a young player.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leonard will get an immediate chance to double his season total as the Capitals play the back half of a back-to-back against the New York Rangers on Sunday night. The matchup will be Leonard\u2019s first career game against the Rangers and his first visit to Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Leonard scored his first NHL goal into an empty net last April, the same day that Alex…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-219980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}