The Capitals got a big win Wednesday night in Jersey, topping the Devils 6-4 in the second game of a back-to-back to get to 2-3-1 on the year – and Dylan Strome had a pair of goals in the win, one of which came from an Alex Ovechkin assist.
“Stromer” is surging on the top line with Ovi and Matt Phillips, and when he joined The Junkies on Thursday morning after a long 36 hours, the guys had a laugh with him that he didn’t get the hat trick, instead seeing Ovechkin put in an empty-net goal at the end.
“Ovi could’ve dropped me that one on the empty-netter, no?” Strome laughed. “At this point in the season, the way it was going there for a little bit, I don't care who it was. I don't care if it was Hunter Shepard, that was gonna shoot that in, I think we just want to get up two goals.”
The first goal Strome scored, off Ovi’s assist, was a beaut though, as he was tangled up with a Devil and managed the shot as he was tumbling to the ice, and got it in the net – not an easy feat, for sure, but something that gave them breathing room on their first lead of the season.
“That was a weird one, I think. It looks a lot harder, I think, on the replay, but I think it's just the kind of like reactionary thing,” Strome said. “Any time you're close to the puck near the net, you're kind of just trying to get it off any way you can. I was following and the guy kind of hooked me – I think they might have been getting a penalty on the play – and then, it was kind of just like along the ice and just trickled in. I think the goalie’s pad kind of lifted up at just the right time, but I'll take it for sure. It was a big goal at the time to go up 2-0, we hadn’t had a lead this year yet until Mantha scored in the first period, so that was nice.”
If you watched just the first period, which ended with a 3-0 Caps lead, and maybe switched over to the Wizards game like Cakes did, you missed a Devils second-period blitz that saw them score four goals in less than six minutes and take a 4-3 lead to the second intermission.
“I think we were kind of thinking the same thing that you were thinking when you switched back – it wasn’t ideal,” Strome said of the flurry. “We've had so much trouble scoring goals this year, but then we got three and then it's like, okay, I think we kind of got a little too comfortable, like, ‘oh, we got three, we can probably get four or five.’ Then they made it 4-3 and we were like ‘oh, no!’”
Tough for rookie Hunter Shepard, who made his NHL debut last night, to go through as well, but Strome scored on a power play 18 seconds into the third, Connor McMichael made it 5-4 two minutes later, and that held up until Ovi iced it with 95 seconds to go.
“We had the confidence, we were feeling good and we knew we could score some goals, and we wanted to prove it to Shepard that we could do it, obviously his first game and it's not easy,” Strome said. “We kind of hung in there, he made some big saves in the third and, power play got us one at the beginning of the third, and then Connor with a big goal there to, to take the lead. It was a crazy game for sure, ups and downs, but I thought we were the better team for two out of three periods, and we’ll take that.”
And as you can imagine, the locker room was an excited one following the game, and looking ahead to a bright future.
“The boys were definitely excited for a win. The wins and goals have definitely been hard to come by, so to match our season total in goals in one game was a good feeling,” Strome said. “Hopefully that'll just propel us to the next level. We’re 2-3-1, so it could be a lot worse – we could be 1-5 or 1-6 – but we’re battling, and we'll bring together a couple in a row here and be back in the picture in no time.”
