Usually, the day after a game, we’ll focus in on one moment or one stretch of time within a game that led to the win or the loss.
Today that will not be the plan, because there was no one moment where the Caps lost yesterday’s game – but there was a moment that we will remember for the rest of our lives, and that was when Alex Ovechkin fired Goal #895 past Ilya Sorokin.
It started, as so many of Ovechkin’s goals have over the years, on the power play. Casey Cizikas tripped up Rasmus Sandin seven minutes into the second period, giving the Caps their first man advantage of the afternoon. Immediately you could feel the energy ramp up, even through the TV, at UBS Arena as the Caps’ captain jumped over the boards.
The Caps kicked things off on the power play by…well, rather anti-climactically losing the faceoff in the Islanders’ zone and seeing the puck get sent all the way back down the ice. But then things happened fairly quickly from there.
John Carlson goes back to collect the puck, and then drops it off for Dylan Strome. Strome carries it into the neutral zone and crosses over to the middle, then sends it over to Tom Wilson, who carries the puck into the zone. Upon doing so, he almost immediately finds Alex Ovechkin sliding into his office, hits him with the pass…and history is made. A textbook play, a ridiculous release, and a shot that no goalie is stopping.
First, let’s look at the visualizer, because watching the bench empty is kind of delightful when it’s represented by a bunch of little numbered circles:
Now, of course, for the video, because it hasn’t gotten old yet and likely won’t for a very, very long time:
Yes, the Capitals gave up two more goals after this. And yes, they lost this game. They didn’t so much look bad (overall, at least; there were certainly bad plays that cost them) as bored early on – because, y’know, Islanders – and disinterested after the goal, because who cares about an early April game against the Islanders when you can be celebrating your captain doing the impossible? So for now we give them a pass.
Now that history has been made, the chase complete, and every goal by the captain establishes a new record, hopefully the team can shake off the wonderful but certainly present distractions of all of this and focus on the next hurdle: going into the playoffs strong and giving their history-making captain another shot at a Cup.
A few days to celebrate, recuperate, and get back to work before a rematch against a bunch of a$$holes in Carolina.