Today’s Noon Number: 5,567 – Number of days since a Cap last scored the game-winning or -tying goal in three-straight games, something that Troy Brouwer will try to do tonight in Tampa after having scored the game-winners on Saturday and Tuesday nights.
Back on November 13 and 15, 1997, Peter Bondra scored the Caps’ last goal in a pair of 3-2 wins in Buffalo and Montreal. A few nights later, he scored the Caps’ sixth goal to force overtime against the Avalanche in a game that would end in a tie (remember those?).
Since then, numerous Caps have tallied game-winning and/or -tying goals in back-to-back games, most recently Brooks Laich last March 10 and 11. Between Bondra’s feat and the man he was eventually traded for going back-to-back with GWGs last spring, Bondra had another four such pairs of goals, Alexander Semin and Richard Zednik each had two, Sergei Berezin, Andrew Brunette, Jan Bulis, Jaromir Jagr, Marcus Johansson and Dmitri Khristich each did it once. And then there’s Alex Ovechkin, who has done it six times. (Note: shootout winners don’t count, otherwise you can add four more to Ovechkin’s total, one more for Semin, and add Nicklas Backstrom to the list.)
So here’s to Brouwer trying to accomplish a goal-scoring feat that not even Alex Ovechkin has pulled off (and if any of the other Caps who dress tonight want to score the game-winner, well, that’d be fine, too).