Caps seeing offensive contributions from all over roster originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington
WASHINGTON — Alex Ovechkin hasn’t scored in three games. Four in a row for Evgeny Kuznetsov and eight for John Carlson. Nicklas Backstrom, T.J. Oshie and Tom Wilson are all out dealing with injuries. The Capitals haven’t been getting goals from any of the usual suspects who have starred for them over the last half-decade or more.
And yet, the Capitals have scored nine goals on their way to back-to-back wins over the Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings. That offense has come courtesy of players who usually find goals much harder to come by. After Erik Gustafsson, who entered last weekend with zero goals on the season, scored a hat trick to beat the Maple Leafs on Saturday, it was Nic Dowd playing the hero Monday with two goals 11 seconds apart against the Red Wings.
“It has to happen that way,” Laviolette said Monday of getting offense from unlikely places. “Inside of what we do, it can’t just be the same one or two people every night. So I do think that we’ve gotten a team consistent effort and it’s not even about the goals and the production. It is because ultimately it drives wins, but you want to play well, you want to do the right things, you want to have the process be the right way and everybody’s got to buy into that and everyone’s got to do that and I think our guys have done a really good job with that.”
Gustafsson added a third-period tally Monday as well, raising his total to four goals in two games. The other three goals came courtesy of defensemen Dmitry Orlov and Trevor van Riemsdyk as well as winger Garnet Hathaway. That trio has combined for just nine goals between them this season, though Orlov missed over a month due to injury.
For those counting at home: That’s three defensemen and two fourth-line forwards accounting for nine goals in two games. They’ve propelled the Capitals to wins over the Maple Leafs, who have more points than two division leaders, and a Red Wings team in the thick of the race for a Wild Card spot. All while stars such as Ovechkin and Carlson have been held off the stat sheet.
“You play the game as a kid to score,” Dowd said. “I think you get up to the NHL and you gotta figure out a way to stay in the league because you got guys like Ovi and Backy and Kuzy and Oshie. The list goes on every single team that are quite honestly better than you at doing that. So you got to find a way to stick. Guys on every single team have done that including myself and tonight it was, like I said, I like to try to do the same thing every night. Some nights you get rewarded, some nights you don’t. Tonight we needed to score.”
