Hurricanes 4, Capitals 3 (OT)

The Hurricanes wanted it more tonight, scoring a goal in overtime to send the Caps to Tampa on a losing streak.  The game had a great tempo to start, few whistles and chances at both ends.  This was the game the Caps appeared to miss Alex Ovechkin, as they were not able to get the goals tonight.  It took a clutch goal from Eric Fehr with 10 seconds left to even get to overtime.  At least someone was celebrating:

It would have been nice to have some warning the Hurricanes would play so hard, but it was too late by the time Craig Laughlin made his pronouncement.  Admiral Ackbar wasn't happy:

-Former Hurricane Joe Corvo scored his first two goals as a Capital and Scott Walker had his first assist as a Cap.  Congrats!  Corvo had been coming around gradually, but he really made a difference tonight.

-Mike Green could have destroyed Zach Boychuk with an open-ice hit, but chose not to, still got the puck from him, and started a great scoring chance the other way.  That's what hockey's about, kids, not Matt Cookery.

-The refs were letting the boys play tonight, but all the same, the Caps special teams looked good.  The powerplay had good movement, good pressure, and shot the puck, and Corvo scored.  The penalty kill had good pressure and allowed just the one 5-on-3 goal.

-#needsmorebradley:  Brads had an assist on the first goal of the game and was +1 in 10:49 with 1 shot and 1 hit.  

-Semyon Varlamov looked strong and was amazing at times, but got hung out to dry on a number of plays and the Caps saddled him with another loss.  

-Kudos to the Jason Chimera-Brendan Morrison-Eric Fehr line and to Brooks Laich.  Great hustle all night from them.  Congrats to Fehr on his first 20-goal season.  Congrats to Laich for setting a career high in assists.  I would give Chimmer even more kudos if he had actually shown up on the scoresheet.

-Nicklas Backstrom had another great game with 2 assists to push his totals to 58 assists and 87 points.   And when does it happen that Backis goes 12-4 (75%) on faceoffs and David Steckel is 7-13 (35%)?  It's just a shame the game ended like a bad Lebowski acid flashback.