With last night’s win over the New York Rangers, the Capitals now have 40 wins and 88 points on the season. To put that in perspective, the Capitals won 40 games in total last season and finished with 91 points. This year’s Caps still have 20 games to go, so it’s safe to say this has been quite the turnaround.
Games against the Rangers are always a bit more…frenetic than most matchups for the Caps, but a win tonight felt even more critical given Washington’s last few results. It wasn’t looking great through 50 minutes—after a quick goal from Pierre-Luc Dubois, the Caps were down 2-1 and couldn’t seem to solve Igor Shesterkin and the Rangers. Alex Ovechkin had other plans though, and scored his 32nd goal of the season and 885th of his career to tie it. With no more goals in regulation it was time for overtime, where Tom Wilson played hero at Madison Square Garden. Let’s take a closer look at the poetry in motion that was the overtime game-winner.
After some back and forth in bonus hockey, Tom Wilson and Dylan Strome got a two-on-one rush going with Braden Schneider on defense for New York. Wilson carried the puck through the neutral zone before passing it over to Strome. Strome drove towards the net and then drew back slightly, shaking Schneider and pulling Shesterkin over to the right to give Wilson plenty of room to set up for a deflection on his pass.
The amount of patience Strome displayed on this play is incredible. He waited just long enough, clearly longer than Shesterkin and Schneider expected, to slide the puck back over to a waiting Wilson. After trying to recover from Strome’s trickery, Shesterkin had no chance of getting back over to save Wilson’s tip-in tally.
What an absolutely spectacular way for the Capitals to seal this victory at MSG. Caps win 3-2, and hopefully this momentum keeps building for them.