On a night when they expect history, Capitals fall 7-2 to the Flyers
This is why they play the games. The Washington Capitals, the second best team in the NHL with 77 points, took on the only team its fans hate as much as the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Philadelphia Flyers. Things did not go according to plan, even with both teams wearing 1970s vintage throwback uniforms.. Philadelphia, standing at 65 points and in sixth place in the Metropolitan Division, came off a week that saw it lose to New Jersey and Pittsburgh and defeat Colorado and Detroit.
Philadelphia opened up the scoring with a Sean Couturier goal at 15:22, but T.J. Oshie answered with his 20th goal at 18:18, assisted by Jakub Vrana and Nicklas Backstrom. The second period was all Flyers, with goals by Michael Raffl, Couturier, and Jan van Riemsdyk.
The third period didn’t rock the red any more auspiciously, with three tallies by Philadelphia from Nicolas Aube-Kubel, Travis Konecny, and Claude Giroux. A hard shot by Evgeny Kuznetsov at 12:17 and assisted by T.J. Oshie and newly called up Martin Fehervary made it 7-2, but the Capitals couldn’t make anything else happen in the last 8 minutes and had only seven shots on goal. This was a quiet night; even though the Caps outshot the Flyers 27-26, they only won 27% of faceoffs.
Capitals left wing Alex Ovechkin, while the subject of ire at home for his memorabilia-filled basement, started out as the center of attention today. His career goal tally still stands at 698, two short of 700 and currently eighth all time. This is the eleventh season in which he has scored at least 40 goals, second only to the Great One, Wayne Gretzky, who had twelve. His next chance to reach 700 is against his former coach Barry Trotz and the Islanders on Monday night.
