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Capitals vs. Rangers Recap: New York Neutered By Synergy of Size and Skill

T.J. Oshie’s emotion filled three goal game powers Washington to a 4 to 2 victory.

By Geoff Thompson
Washington Capitals v New York Rangers Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

In perhaps the most anticipated regular season game in recent memory Washington walked though New York Justice on their way to a 4 to 2 win.

Here’s Wednesday night’s Plus/Minus:

Plus: In T.J. Oshie’s first game since the passing of his father Tim, Oshie recorded a hat trick while he and teammates wore COACH (Tim’s moniker) helmet decals.

Minus: Pavel Buchnevich.

Twelve more notes on the game:

  1. Zero seconds into the contest Nic Dowd, Carl Hagelin, and Garnet Hathaway squared up with Kevin Rooney, Colin Blackwell, and Phillip De Giuseppe respectively in a largely performative act.
  2. Less than a minute later Brendan Smith tried to take Tom Wilson to task after the latter moved the puck. Wilson was neither tagged nor toppled and earned the Capitals a power play opportunity in the process.
  3. Two more fights completed the first period’s fisticuffs (Michael Raffl, Lars Eller, Anthony Bitetto, and Ryan Strome) and a century of penalty minutes.
  4. Tom Wilson would not return to the game (upper body injury) after being sent to the locker room for a ten minute misconduct penalty late in the frame.
  5. Oshie started the scoring twelve seconds into the second period, netting his 19th of the season with a sharp and heavy shot from the right wing.
  6. Buchnevich drew a minor penalty before imploding on Anthony Mantha in his own zone, cross checking the Capitals forward in the face upon confrontation. A major penalty was confirmed after brief review.
  7. And on the resulting power play Oshie picked up his twentieth goal, slapping home a loose puck from the slot.
  8. Dowd extended Washington’s lead to three just six minutes later by deflecting a John Carlson point shot under and through Alexandar Georgiev.
  9. 75 seconds into the third Alexis Lafreniere finished off a nice passing play to put the Rangers on the scoreboard.
  10. Oshie completed the hat trick with one hundred seconds to play courtesy of an empty net goal. Zero doubts that Coach was watching and smiling.
  11. New York forward Morgan Barron completed the contest’s scoring at 58:44.
  12. Vitek Vanecek made 19 saves in the victory, his twentieth of the season.