Caps Pile On Early, Force Game 7

There were plenty of distractions entering Sunday's Game 6 between the Capitals and Rangers. New York head coach John Tortorella was suspended and watching from a sky box; winger Sean Avery, who was a healthy scratch for Game 5, was back on the ice; and Rangers GM Glen Sather was doing his best to provide the press with another distraction, as he issued an open letter to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman chastising the Capitals organization for failing to provide adequate security behind the visiting bench during Game 5.

But with all the static in the air, the Washington Capitals stayed focused, jumping out to a 3-1 lead after the first period, never looking back on their way to a 5-3 win to force a Game 7 in Washington on Tuesday night. That early lead came thanks to offense from an unlikely source: a trio of defensemen who seemed to have figured something out about Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist.

---

---

The Caps got their first goal at 7:09 of the first from Milan Jurcina, a defenseman that Washington head coach Bruce Boudreau has often publicly urged to shoot more often. His shot beat Lundqvist high on the glove side, an area that's been looking awfully vulnerable since Friday night's game in Washington.

After the Rangers tied it up a little more than a minute later thanks to a Scott Gomez power play goal, Washington defenseman Mike Green, who had been struggling all series long, collected a rebound and fired another shot on Lundqvist that beat the goalie, again, high on the glove side. Washington completed the scoring at 17:04, immediately after defenseman Tom Poti stepped out of the penalty box at exactly the right time to give Washington a 3-on-1 break. Working with checking forwards Dave Steckel and Boyd Gordon, Poti executed the odd man rush to perfection, tapping the puck into an open net for a 3-1 Washington lead after just one period.

Outside of the scoring, the most significant incident in the period had to be the vicious open ice hit that Caps winger Donald Brashear delivered to Rangers plugger Blair Betts. The hit sent Betts crumbling to the ice, and he later had to be helped to the New York locker room. After the play, Brashear was jumped by Rangers defenseman Paul Mara, and both were sent off with matching minors for roughing, meaning Brashear was never penalized for the initial hit, one that's almost sure to be reviewed by the league office for supplementary discipline.

Washington's domination extended into the second period. In what had to be one of the most shocking sequences in the series so far, Viktor Kozlov, a player better known for using his size to skate around the perimeter and keep the puck away from opponents, instead used that size to drive hard to the net from the right wing. The result: another goal on a short-range snap shot where Kozlov's momentum sent him crashing into Lundqvist, 4-1 Caps. Ovechkin closed out the period with another goal, his third in three games, on the power play, when he re-directed a Poti slapshot from the left wing point to make it 5-1 Washington.

The third period saw the Rangers score twice more, outshooting Washington 11-2, but it didn't matter. Washington rookie goalie Simeon Varlamov, just a day short of his 21st birthday, turned aside 29 shots, making all the usual stops that he had to and never giving up a soft goal. Overall, New York outshot Washington 32-22, mostly owed to the fact that the Caps spent most of the final period simply trying to bleed the clock, though Ovechkin seemingly wanted to use it for an opportunity to dish out a few extra hits before finally retiring to the Caps bench in the game's final minutes.

So now, after starting the series down 2-0 and falling behind 3-1, Washington has evened things up headed into Game 7 at home on Tuesday night. For the second game in a row, the Rangers were completely dominated on the ice, while both their coaching staff seems out of control and out of answers. With his one game sentence now served, Tortorella has less than 48 hours to get the Rangers believing in themselves again the way they did in Games 1 and 2. After watching them sit dejectedly on the bench in the third period, it's clear that Tortorella has an incredible challenge ahead of him, as the superior team in this series has finally woken from its slumber and put it all together on the ice.