| Washington Capitals vs Nashville Predators | ||||||
| Team | P1 | P2 | P3 | OT | Shootout | Total |
 Washington Capitals | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
 Nashville Predators | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| Current Status: Final (Shootout) | ||||||
Plus: It was nice to finally get long awaited defensemen Ethan Bear into NHL action with the Caps. You can tell he’s still rusty from not playing an NHL game in probably seven months but he made some great plays and reads to stop some of the oppositions chances.
Minus: It was not a particularly good game by the Caps overall, or at least the third period, but they were trying to acclimate Bear and also were without Martin Fehervary, who has been maybe their best defender all season. They are also still without Sonny Milano, TJ Oshie, and Max Pacioretty.
Key Moment: Hunter Shephard made two HUGE saves to keep the Caps tied late in the second, among a plethora of other saves. Without that, who knows if the Caps would have even had grabbed a point.
Caps Player of the Game: As mentioned, without some key Shephard saves the Caps are dead in the teeth of the Predators. It’s hard not to give him player of the game for the Caps.
Final Thoughts: Again, it wasn’t pretty but the Caps did some good things. They had to manage Bear getting used to playing hockey and also tried Evgeny Kuznetsov on the wing, which is something he hasn’t done since his rookie season, so that was new. The Caps at least stopped the loss bleeding, which is important for confidence.
Ovechkin losing yet another goal to video review has got to hurt. Add that to about 100 hit posts this season you have to feel for the guy. It seems like at some point he’s going on a 10 game goal streak or something, or we all hope so.