Patrick Kane scored in the second round of the shootout to give the visiting Chicago Blackhawks a 4-3 victory over the Washington Capitals on Thursday night.
Kane’s game-winner came after Washington’s Evgeny Kuznetsov and Daniel Sprong both rang shots off the goal post against Blackhawks goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, who then made a pad save on Alex Ovechkin at the start of the third round to seal the win.
Alex DeBrincat and Seth Jones each had a goal and an assist and Dominik Kubalik also scored for Chicago, which improved to 7-3-0 under interim head coach Derek King. Fleury made 25 saves to pick up his 498th career win as he closes in on joining Martin Brodeur (691) and Patrick Roy (551) as the third goaltender in NHL history to hit the 500-win mark.
Garnet Hathaway and Nic Dowd each had a goal and an assist and Kuznetsov also scored for Washington, which lost its second straight game. Vitek Vanecek made 25 saves.
Chicago took a 1-0 lead late in the first period on DeBrincat’s 13th goal of the season and ninth in the last 12 games. The score came off a cross-ice pass from the left wing by Kane and DeBrincat then deked Vanecek and put a backhand past his blocker side.
Washington tied it at the 1:10 mark of the second period when Dowd beat Fleury on the backdoor at the end of a tic-tac-toe rush with Carl Hagelin and Hathaway for his third goal of the season.
Kubalik put the Blackhawks back in front, 2-1, midway through the period on the power play when he took a pass from DeBrincat in the slot and fired a wrist shot past Vanecek’s glove side for his fourth goal of the season and first in 16 games.
Kuznetsov tied it late in the period with his eighth goal of the season with a rebound of an Ovechkin crossing pass that caromed off the skate of Blackhawks center Henrik Borgstrom and then the left post before resting behind Fleury near the goal line where Kuznetsov tapped it in.
Hathaway gave Washington its first lead 57 seconds into the third period when he exited the penalty box and took a stretch pass from Dowd, bouncing in a shot off Fleury’s glove at the end of a clean breakaway.
Jones tied it, 3-3, at the 11:56 mark when he fired a wrist shot off a nice feed from Josiah Slavin from inside the blue line into the top right corner for his third goal of the season.
Washington had the best chance at winning in overtime when Kuznetsov fired a shot off the goal post.
–Field Level Media
