The stars were most definitely not out for the Capitals on Saturday night. Forward Alex Ovechkin and defenseman Mike Green watched the game from a Verizon Center suite – the last place either wanted to be.
That’s 87 goals from last season that Washington couldn’t count on as it played the Florida Panthers for the second night in a row. But Caps players have said for a week now that they can win games even without their top stars on the ice. A productive weekend against the Panthers helped prove that theory.
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Mike Knuble and Tomas Fleischmann each scored a pair of goals for Washington, which broke open a tight game with five third-period goals en route to a 7-4 victory.
The Caps (10-3-4, 24 points) maintained a seven-point lead in the Southeast Division over second-place Tampa Bay (6-4-5, 17 points). No other division foe is within 11 points. Pending Pittsburgh’s late game at San Jose on Saturday night, Washington could find itself tied for the most points in the Eastern Conference.
“I think we all wanted to make sure we came out better in the third,” said Knuble, whose team has struggled in the final period this season and trailed 3-2 tonight. “The game was on the line and we just struck really quick and the crowd got back in it and we just kind of overwhelmed them.”
Neither goalie will want to watch video of this one. Jose Theodore allowed four goals on 28 Florida shots. Not a memorable night by any stretch. But his counterpart, Scott Clemmensen, was far worse. He gave up seven goals on 32 shots and just couldn’t find a way to make the big save in the final period to keep his team in it.
Rookie Mathieu Perreault scored his first NHL goal in fine fashion. The 21-year-old – playing in his third NHL game – has been productive so far. He started the comeback from a 3-2 deficit with the tying goal at 2:21 of the third period. It was the kind of shift that can keep a kid around a little while. Behind the Florida goal, he stripped a defender of the puck, banked a pass off the back of the goal, recovered the puck himself and finished a wrap-around stuff attempt to tie the game at 3. For his effort, Perreault earned the team’s hard hat – that goes to the hardest-working player after a win – and a shaving-cream pie in the face from Green. The Caps’ star defenseman, injured in the first period of Friday’s game and listed as day-to-day, hadn’t even changed out of his suit yet when he delivered the “pie” to an unsuspecting Perreault.
“He’s really adding spark to the team and he’s got great speed,” Caps coach Bruce Boudreau said. “And you wouldn’t believe that a guy his size – and he’s a lot bigger now than he was when we first saw him two years ago as the MVP of the Quebec League in juniors – is that tenacious.”
Can’t forget about Tomas Fleischmann, who has now scored five goals in six games. That’s exactly what the Caps need without Ovechkin in the lineup. Neither Nick Backstrom nor Alex Semin managed a goal on Saturday and Washington still put up seven. That bodes well for the this stretch as it deals with the injuries.
Quintin Laing also notched his second goal of the year in the third period. He scored just 40 seconds after Perreault to put the Caps up 4-3. He also blocked a shot with his ribs earlier in the game and laid a big hit on a Panthers defender – suffering a bloody nose in the process. He and John Erskine got the sellout crowd going with a pair of big hits early in the third – something that hadn’t happened enough in recent games.
“Going into this weekend we wanted to up our hits. I think a couple games ago we only had something like nine or 11 hits in a game,” Laing said. “Against Florida last night we had 29 hits. I think we’re a lot more affective when we do finish our checks.
Florida did manage to tie the game on Cory Stillman’s goal at 5:09. But Fleischmann and Knuble took it from there. Knuble finished with a season-high four points.
