Columbus Blue Jackets forward Brendan Gaunce received some unplanned dental work on Sunday night.<\/p>\n
Midway through the third period of Columbus\u2019s 2-0 loss to the Washington Capitals, Gaunce was caught with a high stick from Caps forward Hendrix Lapierre in front of Washington\u2019s net. Lapierre, intending to lift Gaunce\u2019s stick, drilled the opposing centerman right in the mouth with the lower shaft of his twig.<\/p>\n
The rough blow bloodied Gaunce and knocked a tooth out, which he then found on the ice and carried back with him to the Blue Jackets bench. While he did head down the tunnel for some initial repairs, Gaunce returned to the game only a few minutes later and played two more shifts in regulation.<\/p>\n
Lapierre was assessed a double minor penalty for high-sticking after the play, putting the Capitals down a man for four minutes with just a 1-0 lead in the third.<\/p>\n
Coming into the game, the Capitals had the 28th-ranked penalty kill in the league (74.4 percent), but they successfully battled through the lengthy spell down a man. Head coach Spencer Carbery gave major props to his shorthanded group, as they helped the Caps grind out a win at the end of a very grueling part of the team\u2019s schedule.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust our guys at the end of this stretch of games that we\u2019ve played every second night, let\u2019s call it two and a half weeks, to finish that way and have to dig in, grind through four minutes,\u201d Carbery said. \u201cI thought it was very emblematic of the way that we\u2019ve played over this stretch. Just finding a way, laying our bodies on the line. Some huge blocks, some huge clears for those four minutes to essentially preserve the game for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
After an abysmal start to the season with their penalty kill, the Capitals have excelled shorthanded since Thanksgiving. They have the 10th-best PK over the past five games (86.7 percent) and have killed off nine opposing power plays in a row.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Scotty Allen and the guys, with the start that we had, sometimes you go through ebbs and flows with your special teams,\u201d Carbery said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been through it with our power play, and you kind of hit a bit of a reset button, and you start to break down and make sure the communication is clear, the reads are clear, everybody understands very concretely where they need to be and what they need to do and their roles on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s become a little bit more clear. It\u2019s been the same for the last three years that I\u2019ve been here, but just sometimes to come back and go, \u2018Okay, let\u2019s refresh on what everybody\u2019s responsibilities are in this situation, this situation, this situation.\u2019 I think that\u2019s helped a lot, and our kill was huge tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Capitals got five shorthanded saves from Logan Thompson in the third and four shot blocks, one each from Connor McMichael, Rasmus Sandin, Tom Wilson, and Trevor van Riemsdyk. After killing off the penalty, Aliaksei Protas potted an empty-net goal to seal the two standings points for the Caps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Columbus Blue Jackets forward Brendan Gaunce received some unplanned dental work on Sunday night. Midway through the third…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-337678","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337678","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=337678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}