Calgary Flames 6-2 Washington Capitals
Each new match of Alexander Ovechkin in the National Hockey League brings him new success. But the game against Calgary was still special, even if it was extremely unsuccessful for Alexander himself and his team.
The Canadian match was Ovi’s 1300th anniversary in the world’s strongest league, and before that, only a first draft pick in history had had so many matches for a team.
First drafted in 1988, Mike Modano played all 1,459 games for the Minnesota North Stars, who drafted him, and the Dallas Stars, which the Minneapolis team became after moving to Texas.
In total, before Ovechkin, only 13 hockey players played in such a significant number of meetings in the NHL, and the Russian will likely rise even higher in the historic standings table, because his contract with Washington is still long-standing.
But the current mood of Alexander the Great is certainly not jubilee. The “Capital” was defeated by the “lights” with a score of 2:6, and the captain himself did not take any effective actions, he was able to make only one shot at the target, made three powerful moves, blocked shots. Calgary hockey players finished the game 3 times with a score of -1.
But defeat isn’t the only problem for Caps. During the match, the team’s defender Martin Fehervara and, even more unpleasantly, main goalkeeper Darcy Kumper were injured.
There were many interesting things with him. Flames fans are likely to get quick karma from the opposing goalkeeper’s injury at the end of the second period, as he had previously waved five cents at Lights forward Tyler Toffoli and was not sent off.
Another of Caps’ Russian forward, Evgeny Kuznetsov, assisted in the game, but also failed to shoot or hit the goal and got a -2 benefit. Defender Andrei Alekseev (known in the Russian Federation as a foreign agent) finished the match with two penalty minutes, two strong moves and plus or minus -1.
Pittsburgh Penguins 6-2 St. Louis Blues
In Pittsburgh, Evgeni Malkin’s Penguins starring Vladimir Tarasenko, Pavel Buchnevich, Ivan Barbashev, and Alexei Toropchenko. But the latter did not come to this meeting.
The game may turn into an insignificant victory for the Penguins, who have gained momentum in the last period, enjoyed the first period and made a good start for themselves. Kasperi Kapanen opened the score, Brian Rast took the lead and Pavel Buchnevich hit a good shot to score his eighth goal of the season. But the last word in the episode remained for Pence – Kapanen scored a double goal. And Malkin assisted in two of the three goals.
So, everything would have worked out if it weren’t for Jordan Binnington, the Blues goalkeeper, famous for his uncontrollable bursts of aggression. At the end of the first episode, he tried to hit Jason Zucker in the face with a glove behind his goal. The goalkeeper really hit the striker, but the referees ignored it.
At the start of the second 20 minutes after Malkin’s third pass of the game, Binnington naturally “flew off the tower” when Zucker scored the Penguins’ fourth goal. The blues goalie went to the bench and started shouting at Zucker, who only nodded. Perhaps the goalkeeper saw some kind of provocation at the celebration of the striker, but only in this case he was the only one in the arena.
As a result, Binnington was suspended for ten minutes and Craig Berubi replaced him with Thomas Greiss and even Vladimir Tarasenko restored the intrigue of the match, but Kapanen scored a hat-trick in the remaining time and Pittsburgh captain Sidney Crosby scored the final goal.
Tampa Bay Lightning – Toronto Maple Leafs – 4:3 Overtime
Tampa Bay and Toronto performed wildly in the playoffs last season and continue to delight fans in their regular season games. Also, the meeting in Florida was meaningful in many ways.
For example, Lightning veteran forward Corey Perry played his 1200th league game, marking the event with two assists. Maple Leafs forward Mitch Marner completely broke the club record by scoring a double. The longest single-player scoring streak ever for the Maple Leafs was 18 games. Darryl Sittler managed to score many consecutive matches in the 1977/78 season and Eddie Olchik in the 1989/90 season.
Now Marner has scored 26 (9+17) points in 19 games! And he opened the minority score against Tampa and tied while playing in the majority in the third period.
Toronto ran the game twice before finally returning. But in both cases, the Russian forwards evened the score for the “lightning”. First, Vladislav Namestnikov took a derelict puck and finally took his first shot of the season.
And then Nikita Kucherov transformed the majority with a very accurate shot, as well as clever and cunning. Thus, “Tampa” repeated the club record by playing a lot in ten consecutive matches.
After Alex Killorn’s shot from the kick-off rim, everything was decided in overtime and one of the main protagonists of the match was Lightning goalkeeper Andrey Vasilevsky, who saved 36 shots.
Other matches
Minnesota Wild – Anaheim Ducks – 5:4 B
Edmonton Oilers – Montreal Canadiens – 5:3
Boston Bruins 5-1 Colorado Avalanche
Philadelphia Flyers 2-3 New Jersey Demons
Ottawa Centaurs – San Jose Sharks – 5:2
Detroit Red Wings 1-4 Vegas Golden Knights
New York Rangers 2-5 Chicago Black Hawks
Seattle Kraken – Florida Panthers – 1: 5
Los Angeles Kins 2-4 Carolina Hurricanes
Vancouver Canucks – Arizona Coyotes – 3:2 Overtime
Minnesota forward Kirill Kaprizov played another great game, scoring five shots on goal in the game against Anaheim, and eventually delivering an abandoned puck and a post-game penalty kick.
Two assists by Artemy Panarin did not help his Rangers in the match against the Russian first team in the NHL “Chicago”. Igor Shesterkin was on the bench at this meeting.
The 15th successful shot of the season came from Carolina forward Andrey Svechnikov. He helped the Hurricanes win and saved goalkeeper Peter Kochetkov 31 times.