The first period of the Washington Capitals’ playoff Game 3 versus the New York Rangers didn’t see much action. In fact, the only thing of note to come out of the first 20 minutes is that Caps center Jay Beagle went four-for-four at the face-off dot.
Beagle finished the game, winning 10 of his 12 face-offs taken. That’s 81 wins of the 120 postseason total for 2015. This continues to lead the NHL at 67.5 percent.
“He’s strong and he’s getting low when he takes the draws,” Capitals’ center Nicklas Backstrom said about Beagle’s face-off prowess. “It’s hard to come underneath his stick.”
As a team, Washington won 40 of the 58 face-offs taken in the game.
In the second period, Beagle scored 7:31 in to give the Capitals a 1-0 lead. His initial shot was blocked by the blocker pad of Rangers’ goaltender Henrik Lundvist (21 saves) and then proceeded to careen off to his right. Beagle followed up his shot and wrapped the puck around the net, able to get his shot to go off Rangers’ defenseman Keith Yandle’s skate and past Lundqvist.
“I was just trying to create havoc,” Beagle said about his game winning goal. “I got a good shot in the slot there… [Lundqvist] made a good blocker save and I tried to come back around and put it on net because I knew guys were crashing there… and [I] tried to wrap it around and got a little lucky and it went in.”
One of the assists on the Beagle goal goes to teammate Andre Burakovsky. This marks his first career NHL playoff point.
Tonight’s 1-0 win is the second career playoff shutout for Caps goaltender Braden Holtby (30 saves). His last shutout was two years ago to the day and was also a 1-0 win over the New York Rangers.
Even after his team’s impressive win in Game 3, Washington Head Coach Barry Trotz wasn’t all that thrilled with its performance.
“We have to play better,” he said following the game. “I didn’t like our first period… way too many turnovers.”
The Caps improved to 21-for-22 on the penalty kill in the 2015 post season by adding two in Game 3.
With this last win, the Capitals take a 2-1 series lead and look to make it 3-1 Wednesday night from the Verizon Center at 7:30 p.m. The game will air nationally on NBCSN as well.