Caps beat Bruins in Game 1 on Nic Dowd OT goal

Nic Dowd tipped a T.J. Oshie shot from just inside the blue line and it dribbled through Tuukka Rask’s pads at 4:41 of overtime to give the Washington Capitals a 3-2 victory in Game 1 of the first round of the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs on Saturday night.

The B’s never led in this one, which saw the Caps lose their starting goalie Vitek Vanecek in the first period. Veteran Craig Anderson stepped in and earned the victory.

You didn’t have to wait long to know that the playoffs had arrived. Alex Ovechkin lined up David Krejci in the Boston zone and knocked him off his skates. Game on.

The two teams went up and down the ice in the first few minutes, but both teams made strong defensive plays to keep the puck from getting on net.

The Caps took the first lead of the series at 6:22 off a bad break for the B’s. Charlie McAvoy had his stick break on a one-timer attempt from the right point and the Caps broke the other way on an odd-man rush with McAvoy left to defend with nothing in his hands. Tom Wilson played a give-and-go with Oshie, taking the return pass and beating Rask with a high shot over Rask’s glove arm.

But the B’s evened it up at 13:10 and it produced what could have been a series-altering sequence. On a right dot faceoff, Jake DeBrusk beat Nick Jensen to a Curtis Lazar faceoff win, took one move to his left and beat Vanecek with a low wrister.

On the goal, Vanecek tried to catch up to the puck by doing a split, but he ended up hurting himself in the process. He had to come out of the game and, with Ilya Samsonov having just come off the COVID list earlier in the day after spending nearly two weeks on it, the Caps turned to the 39-year-old Anderson.

The B’s had squandered an earlier power play when John Carlson was called for delay and, with Anderson in, they got another advantage when Taylor Hall induced Justin Schultz to trip him off the rush. But with a cold goalie in the net, the B’s did not get enough pucks to the net and went into the first intermission all tied up.

The Caps held an 11-7 shot advantage in the first. Rask was forced to make a very good pad save on a Nicklas Backstrom backhander.

He made a few more good stops early in the second, one on Ovechkin and another on a dangerous snap-shot that Rask just got with his glove arm. Later in the period, the Caps had a 3-on-1 but DeBrusk lifted John Carlson’s stick at the last second to force his shot wide of the net.

Some of the the B’s better chances were off redirections that happened to go right into Anderson. Then, as luck would have it, the Caps regained the lead at 8:44 on a deflection of their own. Brenden Dillon flung a shot toward the net that went off Jeremy Lauzon’s stick past Rask.

Things got heated shortly after that. Ovechkin got away with a push on Kevan Miller near the boards, Lauzon retaliated and was the only one to get caught. The B’s were able to kill it off.

Though the Caps were the better team through much of the second period, the B’s evened it up. The top line nearly tied it on a goalmouth scramble, but David Pastrnak pushed the puck just wide. He did take a high stick from Dmitri Orlov and the B’s kept grinding until they scored at 16:38. Pastrnak’s shot from the left side went off Carlson, then deflected off Nick Ritchie, just inching its way over the line before before Dillon could yank it back.

The last few seconds were wild. Brad Marchand just missed a shot from the slot, then his hot rebound off the end boards hopped over his stick and gave the Caps an odd-man rush which saw Lars Eller clang the crossbar just before time expired.

Neither team could score in the third, leading to sudden death.

Game 2 is set for Monday night (7:30 p.m.) in Washington.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3tQdjoH