Green, Perreault score twice each in 7-1 takedown of Detroit It was a matchup of unbeaten teams and yet another challenging test for the Capitals early in this NHL season. Once again they passed with flying colors.
In only the second game in league history between two teams who began a season perfect through at least five games, Washington broke open a close contest en route to a 7-1 victory over the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday night at Verizon Center.
In a much-anticipated game between the top team so far in the Eastern Conference and the best team in the Western Conference, Caps defenseman Mike Green and forward Mathieu Perreault each scored two goals. Perreault’s late tally with eight seconds left in the second period extended Washington’s lead to 4-1. The Caps added three more in a dominant third period.
“The first 10 minutes they come at you in waves,” Washington coach Bruce Boudreau said of the Red Wings, who entered the night 5-0-0. “They’re so fast and they know where everybody is. The difference is our goalie was better than their goalie tonight. I think they just ran out of steam with their second game in two nights in the third period.”
That would be Tomas Vokoun (32 saves), who kept the Caps ahead 3-1 during a dicey stretch in the third period when they took four penalties in a span of 5 minutes, 34 seconds. That gave the Red Wings a pair of 5-on-3 power plays. And while they scored on one of them at 11:05 on a Niklas Kronwall goal, Washington managed to kill the other one. Vokoun had a fine left pad stop on Detroit forward Danny Cleary with seven seconds left on that second 5-on-3.
“If they got another 5-on-3 goal it would have been a one goal game and then it’s a different game from there,” Perreault said. “But I thought our penalty killers played really good. They blocked shots and after that kill we kind of got the momentum from them and then we got a couple goals and from there we never looked back.”
And Perreault’s late goal helped put the game out of reach. Late in the period, Matt Hendricks whirled and fired a shot on Red Wings goalie Ty Conklin (18 saves, 25 shots) from the right side a few feet inside the blueline. Conklin had little traffic directly in front and thought he had the puck. He didn’t. It slipped between his pads and was poked home by the opportunistic Perreault with eight seconds left to make it 4-1.
The Caps built that advantage on the strength of a re-invigorated power play. It all started with a boarding penalty taken by Detroit forward Todd Bertuzzi on Caps defenseman John Carlson. It took just 21 seconds for Nicklas Backstrom to find teammate Green for a back-door pass that he slammed home for a 1-0 lead exactly six minutes into the game. That was Green’s second goal of the season.
Just 61 seconds later, Mike Knuble helped force a Red Wings’ turnover in the defensive zone. His stick work on Cory Emmerton caused the uncharacteristic mistake. Knuble then dropped a pretty back pass to Alex Semin, who found Marcus Johansson down low. He roofed the puck from a bad angle past Conklin for the 2-0 lead.
Green left the ice at 17:03 of the first period after taking a puck to the face from Detroit forward Darren Helm. He immediately skated to the dressing room for stitches to his left jaw. Green returned for the start of the second period, however, and it didn’t take long for him to make his presence felt again. At 4:59 of the second Green whipped home a pass from Ovechkin for a second power-play goal to up the lead to 3-0.
A satisfying night was under way for a team that extended its franchise-best win streak to start the season to 7-0. Washington now has 14 standings points as it looks ahead to a two-game trip to western Canada next week with contests at Edmonton on Thursday and at Vancouver – last year’s Presidents’ Trophy winner – on Friday.
“I think after tonight it’s over and done with,” Green said. “I think that we’ve stepped up to the challenges, this was a big week for us and we knew that coming into it. We’re definitely happy where we are, but we still have a lot of work to do. I thought we played maybe a 40-minute tonight and it’s got to be 60 [minutes].”
