Behind the glass: Kraken bring more than lousy weather to DC
Alex Ovechkin scored his 930th goal, but Jared McCann broke a 3-3 tie with 5:27 left and Seattle handed the Caps their first home loss of the season, 5-3.
CapitalsWASHINGTON, D.C. -- I've been to enough games here to know the sound this building makes when something special is brewing. Read more: Behind the glass: Kraken bring more lousy weather to DC.
Sunday night we heard it. Ovi's first goal of the season, Capital One Arena shaking, the Grateful Dead corduroy snapbacks bouncing all over the lower bowl. For about 25 minutes of hockey, this felt like another night in the fortress, where the Caps had gone 13-2-2 in their last 17 home games dating back to last season. It's simple: we win at home.
Then Seattle reminded us that the fortress walls only hold if you guard the gate. The Kraken came in fast, came in hungry, and walked out with a 5-3 win. Here's the view from behind the glass.
The great
Alex Ovechkin. Number 930. The Protas brothers, Aliaksei and Ilya, went to work on the forecheck behind the Seattle net, forced the turnover, and the puck found the Great Eight alone in the low slot. Snap shot, past Joey Daccord, 2-1 Caps.
Twenty-two seasons in and the man still finds the soft spot like it owes him money. When that horn went, nobody was sitting down.
The good
Jordan Kyrou is officially a Capital. Cole Hutson threw a beautiful cross-ice feed and Kyrou buried it from the bottom of the left circle for his first goal in a Washington sweater. The kid Hutson is seeing the ice like a 10-year vet.
Related: Capitals host short-handed Kraken Sunday
And give Boone Jenner credit for pure grit: he picked off a lazy Seattle clear at the blue line 46 seconds into the third, got stoned by Daccord on the first try, and jammed home his own rebound to tie it 3-3. The Caps outshot Seattle 36-27. On most nights in this building, that's a win. We won the dot 34-32, and winning faceoffs is critical with our style of play.
The bad
Daccord. The Seattle goalie stood on his head with a season-high 33 saves, and every time we thought one was going in, he got a piece of it. Meanwhile, Logan Thompson stopped 22 of 27, and that's not the number we need from our guy.
The killer was the Jordan Eberle goal with 10 seconds left in the first. Eberle knocked home his own rebound at the back post. Instead of heading to the room up 2-1 with the building rocking, we went in tied. That one stung.
The ugly
Midway through the second, Ryan Winterton found Frederick Gaudreau in front, and Gaudreau slid a backhander around Thompson while nobody picked him up. Then came the dagger.
With 5:27 left in a tie game, Jared McCann carried the puck into our zone, slipped past Timothy Liljegren and beat Thompson with a low wrist shot. Winterton followed with a breakaway at 17:20 to seal it.
Two goals off the rush in the last six minutes at home. That's not bad luck. That's structure, and it has to get fixed.
Who's up, who's down
Hot: Ovechkin, Kyrou, Hutson, and both Protas brothers, who were the best forechecking pair on the ice. Jenner gets a hot rating for refusing to quit on that rebound.
Not: Thompson had a night he'll want back, especially the winner. The back end got caught flat-footed on the rush, and nobody picked up Gaudreau in front on the goal that put Seattle up 3-2.
Fans excited or depressed?
Neither, honestly. Frustrated is the word. The Caps are 3-2-0, they dominated the shot clock, and they got beat by a hot goalie and a couple of breakdowns. Walking out onto F Street, the talk was about the late collapse, not the effort. Seattle is 4-2-0 and playing like a team that can score with anybody. Losing to them isn't a disaster. Losing a tie game at home in the final six minutes is the part that eats at you.
Next up
The Caps hit the road Tuesday night in Raleigh.
The Hurricanes play fast, forecheck hard and punish mistakes in transition, so the same defensive lapses that burned us Sunday will get exposed again if they aren't cleaned up. Thompson needs a bounce-back, and Ovi now has the monkey off his back. Let's go get one in Raleigh.
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John Fredericks is the publisher of Disruptor Sports and the founder of the John Fredericks Media Network. He hosts The John Fredericks Show weekday mornings across the network's stations, and on Saturdays he is Godzilla, host of Godzilla Wins, the network's NFL and fantasy football show. Every one of his picks lives on the Godzilla Wins picks page, record and all. The desk's model has its own read on every game on The Card.
This column was written by John Fredericks. It was fact-checked and copy edited by the Disruptor Sports desk working with Claude, a generative AI model made by Anthropic. How our newsroom works.
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