Alex Ovechkin scored his 891st career goal to move within four of breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL record, helping the Washington Capitals defeat the host Boston Bruins 4-3 on Tuesday night.
Washington (48-17-9, 105 points) scored twice in both the first and third periods en route to breaking a three-game skid (0-2-1). Ovechkin’s goal gave the Capitals a 2-0 lead that Boston would come back to even.
Dylan Strome broke a tie with 9:23 left in regulation and added an assist to lead Washington. Nic Dowd and Tom Wilson also scored, while Charlie Lindgren made 21 saves.
David Pastrnak scored twice, Morgan Geekie had two assists and Vinni Lettieri also found the net for Boston (30-36-9, 69 points), which has lost nine straight (0-8-1).
Jeremy Swayman made 28 saves in the Boston goal.
On the tiebreaker, Strome buried the rebound of Aliaksei Protas’ point shot that bounced hard off the end wall and was loose at the front of the net.
The Capitals tallied an insurance goal with 5:14 left as Wilson banked a shot off Boston defenseman Mason Lohrei and past Swayman while finishing a two-on-one rush. Pastrnak’s response 27 seconds later was in vain.
The Capitals posted a dominant territorial start and led 2-0 after one. Dowd scored the game-opening goal short-handed — just 11 seconds into a Boston power play — at the 13:32 mark, taking Brandon Duhaime’s bump in the neutral zone and firing off a wrist shot from the left side.
Ovechkin doubled the Washington advantage on the power play 2:11 later. John Carlson’s initial shot from the high slot took a deflection off the skate of Strome in front and right to Ovechkin, who settled the puck and scored it into an open side of the net.
After recording just four shots in the opening frame, the Bruins halved their deficit when Marat Khusnutdinov dropped the puck for Lettieri to score from just outside the crease at 6:05.
A spirited fight between Boston’s Jeffrey Viel and Washington’s Dylan McIlrath injected further life into the game, and Lindgren made a point-blank stop on Johnny Beecher’s game-tying opportunity before Cole Koepke slid a backhand follow-up just wide.
Less than a minute after the scrap, the Bruins drew a power play that resulted in the tying goal with 2:48 left in the second. After Swayman’s save on Protas at the other end, Pastrnak redirected Geekie’s slap pass to make it a 2-2 game.
Boston College product Ryan Leonard made his NHL debut for Washington, finishing plus-1 in 14:14 of ice time.
–Field Level Media
