Alex Ovechkin, Capitals complete the comeback to edge Canes in physical shootout win

Carolina Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour did not like much of what he saw Friday.

Washington Capitals coach Peter Laviolette thought the game was “awesome.”

It was a game that needed 60 minutes, five minutes of overtime and then a shootout to decide it. The Caps finally won 4-3 as Alex Ovechkin, whose power-play goal tied the score with 5:04 left in the third period, produced the only shootout goal to be the star yet again.

It was a third consecutive loss for the Canes (41-14-6), who did manage to extend their home-ice point streak to 14 games (12-0-2). Rookie Seth Jarvis scored twice, goalie Antti Raanta gave his team a solid game in net with 37 saves and the Canes traded “punches for punches” with the physical Caps, as defenseman Brendan Smith put it.

But Brind’Amour was somewhat somber after the loss.

“We weren’t very good but we were still in position to win there at the end, obviously,” Brind’Amour said. “Our goalie played good for us and kept us in the game. We capitalized on a couple of chances that we had, but we didn’t really generate anything. The mere fact we were in a position to win, we were pretty fortunate.”

The Canes were outshot 40-20 by the Caps (35-18-10) in the Metropolitan Division game and had the puck only a few moments in the overtime as Jarvis was called for a holding penalty on a play that had the Caps’ Dmitry Orlov holding his stick. The Canes did kill off most of the Jarvis penalty before the Caps’ Evgeny Kuznetsov was called for slashing with 20 seconds left in the OT and it was soon on to the shootout.

Caps goalie Ilya Samsonov easily turned away shootout attempts by Trocheck, Andrei Svechnikov and Jarvis. The Caps, shooting second, had Kuznetsov and Nicklas Backstrom fail on shootout tries before Ovechkin cleanly beat Raanta to end it.

Jarvis, without a goal for 18 games, had his first two-goal game in the NHL. He scored the first goal of the game, and his second came with 12.4 seconds left in the second period for a 3-2 lead as he went to the front of the net. Trocheck had tied it 2-2 with a shot from the slot seven minutes into the second.

Kuznetsov and John Carlson had first-period goals for the Caps, who took a 7-2 road win Thursday against Columbus. Ovechkin had a mostly quiet game until scoring on the power play following a Trocheck penalty, picking up his 39th of the season.

“He finds the back of the net. It’s just what he does,” Smith said. “I thought we did a good job but ...”

It was a game of hard knocks. The Canes’ Nino Niederreiter was knocked into the Caps bench in the first period, losing his helmet and taking an angry swipe with his stick. In the third, the Canes’ Derek Stepan hammered defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk into the Caps bench.

Smith, in his second game after recovering from a fractured skull, played with an edge, bashing people and finishing with a team-high five hits.

“It felt similar to a playoff game,” Smith said. “It gets you prepared. You’ve got have that grit and that grind. I try to bring it on a daily basis.”

In the third, Smith put a huge shoulder-to-shoulder hit on Kuznetsov that left the Caps forward needing time to recover.

“We’ve said all along whatever way the games go we can adapt to play,” Brind’Amour said. “Tonight we never got our game going -- at all. From start to finish it just never felt like we were in a groove.”

Looking for more offense, Brind’Amour tweaked his forward lines for the game, using Sebastian Aho on the wing and starting center Jesperi Kotkaniemi on a line with Svechnikov and Martin Necas. The Canes were without forward Jordan Martinook, injured Thursday in the 3-2 loss at Toronto but Jarvis drew back into the lineup.

“It didn’t really work, obviously,” Brind’Amour said of his line changes. “Give the other team credit. They got right to their game and stuck to it and we were chasing it.”

This story was originally published March 18, 2022 at 10:16 PM.

Chip Alexander

The News & Observer

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In more than 40 years at The N&O, Chip Alexander has covered the N.C. State, UNC, Duke and East Carolina beats, and now is in his 15th season on the Carolina Hurricanes beat. Alexander, who has won numerous writing awards at the state and national level, covered the Hurricanes’ move to North Carolina in 1997 and was a part of The N&O’s coverage of the Canes’ 2006 Stanley Cup run.