MONTREAL — It took an extra game, but the Washington Capitals cracked the code at Bell Centre, beating the Montreal Canadiens 5-2 and going up 3-1 in their first-round series.
Now, the teams will head back to Washington for a potential elimination game on Tuesday night.
The Capitals scored two third-period goals — a greasy one by Brandon Duhaime, then a slicker one from Andrew Mangiapane — to take the lead.
Washington also got 16 saves from goalie Logan Thompson, who left Game 3 with an injury but recovered in time to return on Sunday night.
Juraj Slafkovský and Cole Caufield scored Montreal’s goals, both on the power play in the second period.
Playing the line chess game
One of the main factors at play in Game 2’s 6-3 Montreal win was the utter lack of production from Washington’s top line; Dylan Strome, Alex Ovechkin and Anthony Beauviller had no answer for Nick Suzuki, Caufield and Slafkovský.
Capitals coach Spencer Carbery, asked about it pregame, said it was a balancing act, a question of finding the sweet spot between trusting deployments that were successful in the regular season and adapting to the moment.
“There’s a lot of ways that I can get Dylan Strome’s line away from Nick Suzuki’s. A lot of ways,” he said. “But now, does it become a distraction for our group? ”
In Game 4, Strome’s line was significantly more successful — and perhaps not coincidentally, they saw significantly less time against Suzuki. Part of that was due to the amount of power plays; Suzuki typically comes out after Canadiens penalty kills, which is when Strome typically is off the ice, and vice versa. Whatever the reason, it led to a much more successful five-on-five game for Washington.
Ivan Demidov enters the chat
The Canadiens rookie got his first two points of the series on two power-play goals in the second period.
Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said Saturday that he hoped that Demidov being inserted onto the top power play unit in Patrik Laine’s absence would get his rookie some more touches in space, and hopefully that translates into increased confidence for the rookie playing his sixth NHL game.
The insertion of Demidov onto that unit also changed the look of it significantly because Demidov is a left shot and Laine is a right shot.
“The guys are familiar with that setup, but these five guys have not done that setup together for more than one game now,” St. Louis said Saturday. “I’m very confident it could be a really good power play in that setup. Do we find that out tomorrow? Next game? Next year? I don’t know. But they’re great players that can totally work together. I don’t know if we’re going to get that consistent success right now. But we’re going to try.”
He seemed prescient in the second period.
The first power play goal was a very confident play by Demidov, handling the puck under pressure, working it behind the Capitals net and finding Slafkovský in front for a one-timer that beat Thompson high to the far side to tie the game 1-1. And then, with Ovechkin in the box, Demidov worked the puck to Lane Hutson up top, who then sent it to Caufield in the left circle – Laine’s usual spot – and his one-timer beat Thompson short side.
They were Demidov’s first two points in the playoffs. But more importantly, they showed that Demidov is starting to feel like himself in this series.
Referees’ game management
Coming into the game, you could count on one thing: that the officials would take extra steps to ensure that we didn’t get Round 2 of the dust-up between Tom Wilson and Josh Anderson that spilled into Washington’s bench.
Carbery gave us a hint in the morning: “The competitive stuff inside the game. I’m fine with. Like, that’s part of the game,” Carbery said. “There’s some stuff, like the stuff in warm-up, the stuff in TV timeouts — you’ve got to be careful with that because that’s the stuff the league doesn’t want to see.”
The officials didn’t quite put the clamps on everything — Canadiens defenseman Arber Xhekaj spent most of his warmup at the red line, which was no accident — but they went out of their way to keep Wilson and Anderson from coming all that close to each other when the puck wasn’t live. At one point in the second period, too, one of the linesmen took several huge strides to stop Xhekaj from buzzing Washington’s bench.
In game, that was a bit of a different story. Wilson and Anderson certainly managed to find each other, and your opinion on how the refs handled that probably depends on your rooting allegiance.
A momentum-altering penalty kill
When Christian Dvorak took a minor penalty for high-sticking at 4:54 of the second period and Joel Armia was called for hooking Wilson – a questionable call to say the least – at 6:11, the Capitals had an excellent opportunity to build on their 1-0 lead.
The Canadiens at that point had not generated a whole lot offensively, the game appeared on the verge of tilting in the Capitals’ favor, and the Bell Centre crowd had been somewhat muted – or at least a bit less of a factor.
That penalty kill changed that for the Canadiens.
It was a momentum shift in the game and it brought the Bell Centre back to life, with the crowd roaring its approval as the final seconds ticked away on Armia’s penalty.
Canadiens defenseman Mike Matheson was particularly effective in killing the two-man Capitals advantage, and as he finally made his way to the bench after a shift that lasted nearly four minutes, Suzuki, the Canadiens’ captain, skated up behind him and gave Matheson two big taps on the shoulder.
Alexandre Carrier leaves game twice
Just after the seven-minute mark of the first period, Canadiens defenseman Alexandre Carrier had the puck near his own bench when Ovechkin began hurtling toward him with violence on his mind. Ovechkin threw himself at Carrier and just missed, with the undersized defenseman ducking under the hit and appearing to smile after having a near-death experience.
Carrier, however, played two more shifts in the first period and missed the final seven minutes when he went back to the Canadiens’ dressing room.
He emerged for the second period, but in the third, Wilson leveled Carrier again near the Canadiens blue line with a clean, jarring hit that seemed to leave Carrier a bit dazed. As he slowly made his way across the ice and back to the bench, the Capitals entered the Canadiens zone and Brandon Duhaime knocked in a bouncing puck to tie the score 2-2.
Carrier never came back, and if the Canadiens were to lose him it would be a crippling blow to their chances of coming back from a 3-1 series deficit.
(Photo: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)