1. O Captain, My Captain
Now that was vintage Alex Ovechkin.
Locked in from the opening draw, the Caps’ lead-by-example captain did exactly that, posting team highs in shot attempts and hits while opening and, crucially, closing the scoring in the extra session for the first time in his storied career. It’s the time of year when your best players have to be your best players and Alex Ovechkin was literally exactly that in Game 1:
Ovechkin’s GameScore of 3.48 would’ve represented his fourth-best mark over the course of the regular season and second-best since mid-November. Given the stakes, it’s certainly reasonable to say it was his best game of the campaign, really his best game in several years. It’s the kind of performance you’d hoped for when you heard about Ovechkin turning down an appearance on the Tonight Show after breaking the goal record so that he could focus on the postseason or read that he’s been preparing to go “beast mode” in the playoffs since before the season started.
It was a special game from a special player and checked perhaps the last unchecked box on his remarkable resume…
"There are a few things Ovechkin hasn't done, not many, but he's never scored an overtime game-winning goal in the playoffs." 🤷♂️ Literally 10 seconds later… Sean McDonough spoke it into existence. #StanleyCup
— NHL (Bot) (@notnhl.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 11:06 PM
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2. Icing on the Cake
Caps fans know all too well how an ill-timed icing can be disastrous in the playoffs (sorry). In Game 1, however, the were on the right side of such a play in overtime, after an apparently somewhat controversial icing moments before Ovechkin’s game-winning goal. Here’s the play, decide for yourself:
The icing trapped the defensively-challenged line of Patrik Laine, Alex Newhook and Ivan Demidov on the ice and Spencer Carbery took advantage, throwing the greatest goal-scorer of all-time over the boards to do his thing. Ball game.
It was Laine’s only shift of the night to start with a defensive-zone faceoff (Newhook and Demidov had another, also following an icing), and even before the puck ended up behind Sam Montembeault, you could see what that deployment is one Martin St. Louis avoided when possible.
On the night, Montreal iced the puck three times, and the Caps won the ensuing offensive zone draw each time (shoutout to Dylan Strome on all three en route to going 7-for-10 in the offensive zone on the night). The Caps lost the one post-icing faceoff in their end, but escaped relatively unscathed. As cliche as it is, in the post-season, attention to detail and seemingly little things like individual icings and faceoffs can carry outsized importance. Alex Ovechkin skated well under two minutes against the Newhook line in Game 1, but managed to score and have the primary assist on the only two goals the Caps scored at five-on-five in that 1:21 (and created an additional two high-danger scoring chances). Good on the coach and his captain for taking advantage of the opportunities.
You have to give Laine credit, though – he backed up his pre-series talk with on-ice action: he truly looked like he couldn’t care less about Alex Ovechkin on that goal.
3. The Pachyderm on the Premises
Alright, let’s talk about it for a minute. Talk about what? Talk about this:
For better than 50 minutes, the Caps dominated every facet of the game and looked great doing it (which is to say they looked like the November/December Caps and not the March/April Caps). And then… they didn’t. It started with an iffy tripping call on Pierre-Luc Dubois (especially in light of the uncalled mugging Lars Eller had endured moments earlier and whatever the hell Josh Anderson was doing all night without repercussion) and a quick bad-luck-bounce power-play goal-against. Fine, it happens – referees officiate to the score all the time in the NHL.
But the Caps lost their composure thereafter, strayed from the game plan they’d executed so well up to that point, and simply unraveled. Cole Caufield’s game-tying goal became inevitable, and it didn’t end there. Frankly, the Caps were probably fortunate to make it to overtime. Depending on your recent experience with the Caps as one of the League’s best third-period teams (31-1-1 when leading after two periods this season) or your emotional priors as a Caps fan, that was either confounding or unsurprisingly typical.
Whatever it was, hopefully it was a relatively cheap lesson learned – for coach and for players – and a ten-minute span that doesn’t distract too much from an otherwise dominant performance.