Sunday’s afternoon game against Kraken wasn’t looking like the Capitals best. The Kraken are a mediocre team who were playing quite tired. The Caps really should have taken control of the game off the bat and never let it go. But through forty minutes it was a real back and forth with consistency issues with the Caps.
In the third period, however, the Capitals finally showed up to play and with a little more than four minutes left in the game they finally broke the 2-2 tie.
The play started with a dump-in where Pierre-Luc Dubois won the race and fed it to Connor McMichael in the bottom left of the ice. McMichael fed it up to the blue line where Jakob Chychrun used a perfect slap pass to John Carlson on the right who then returned the favor and slap passed to the top of the blue paint where McMichael had moved for a nice tip-in for the game-winning goal.
The play kind of brought all the elements that make up what the best of the Caps. A wall win by Dubois, the perfect position slap passes by the defensemen and a guy in the right spot to pot it in, a la McMichael.
While it was kind of a lackluster attempt by the Caps through the first 40, they are atop the league standings for a reason. Great teams don’t always have to be on to win. It’s something the Caps don’t want to make a habit this close to the playoffs, but it’s a good sign.