Hurricanes Spoil Capitals and Ovechkin’s Night

The Carolina Hurricanes hosted the Washington Capitals on Friday night with both teams having big steaks on the line. The Hurricanes look to increase their standings and rise to the top of the Eastern Conference, being within six points of the one seed. On the other hand, the Capitals look to get into the playoffs with a Wild Card spot. Just one point out of the final playoff spot, Alex Ovechkin looked to push his team into the Stanley Cup race. 

Ovechkin entered the game with 849 career goals, chasing a win and a new milestone. He started out on fire, scoring within the first four minutes of the game, giving the Capitals an early lead. With that goal, Ovechkin also became the second player in NHL history to reach 850 goals. The only other player to reach this milestone was “The Great One”, Wayne Gretzky, who sits at 894 goals. 

Later in the period, Ovechkin closed that gap on Gretzky and gave his team a bigger lead, notching another score to put two on the board for Washington. Things looked great more than halfway through the game for the Capitals, but the Hurricanes came storming back. Jake Guentzel broke the shutout with a late second-period goal. It was all Carolina after this, as they took advantage of two Power Plays in the back half of the third period. Martin Necas punched in the tying goal, and then with 1:51 left to play, Sebastian Aho sank the Capitals scoring the go-ahead goal. 

After being down 2-0 and being outshot 5-1, the Hurricanes controlled the entire game, outshooting the Capitals 44-11 and completing a 4-2 comeback win. As a result, Carolina remains in the race for the first seed with just a handful of games remaining. They also prevented the Capitals from moving into the playoffs and played spoiler to Ovechkin. Washington continues to be one point out of the playoffs as the season comes to a close. For Ovechkin, he now sits 43 goals behind the top scorer of all-time and aims to not miss the playoffs for two consecutive seasons.