For the 67th time in the regular season, two Stanley Cup champion captains met as Alex Ovechkin's Washington Capitals beat Sidney Crosby's Pittsburgh Penguins 4-3 on Tuesday night. And the two superstars came to play in front of the 18,190 spectators in attendance at PPG Paints Arena in Pennsylvania.
The Great Eight scored a powerplay goal to help the Caps jump out to a 4-0 lead in the first period, while Sid The Kid got his team back in the game — a powerplay strike of his own to make it 4-2 — midway through the second period.
The Pens would end up making it 4-3 on a Jake Guentzel goal that was assisted by Crosby with 1:06 remaining in the middle stanza. Both Darcy Kuemper and Alex Nedeljkovic were perfect in the third period, the latter in relief of Tristan Jarry.
Ovechkin outlasts Crosby on Tuesday
It was the 10th time that Ovechkin and Crosby have scored in the same game, and the first since November of 2018, according to NHL.com.
Ovechkin scored his eighth goal of the season and 830th of his illustrious career. With the tally, he sits just 65 goals from passing Wayne Gretzky's NHL record of 894.
“Ovechkin scored his 56th game-winning goal on the road and recorded his 1,507th career point to surpass Ray Bourque for the seventh most with a single franchise in NHL history,” wrote NHL Public Relations on Wednesday morning.
Crosby's PPG was his 21st of the 2023-24 campaign, improving his overall point total to 1,540. He passed Joe Thornton for 12th on the all-time career points list in the process.
“The Penguins captain started the 2023-24 campaign ranked 15th on the list and had already passed Hall of Famers Paul Coffey and Mark Recchi before overtaking Thornton on Tuesday,” wrote NHL Public Relations.
Still, the longtime Penguins captain was not happy with his team's performance.
“It’s never good when you lose,” Sid reflected. “I don’t think everyone is feeling good about getting three and making it 4-3. You want to win divisional games and make sure you get those points and we didn’t do that.”
Capitals forward Tom Wilson obviously felt differently:
“I think we came out, we were playing really well,” he said about his team's four-goal first period. “Maybe one of our best periods of the year. We made it a little harder on ourselves that we probably needed to.”
Two streaks were halted in the second of four meetings between the two Metropolitan Division rivals this season. The Caps snapped a four-game skid, while the Pens saw their three-game winning streak come to an end.
Capitals, Penguins head coaches both relatively happy
“I loved our compete level and climbing back into the hockey game,” said Pittsburgh head coach Mike Sullivan. “We certainly made it a game, but we can’t spot a team those types of goals early on.”
“Give our guys credit, the second period was a disaster, for lack of a better term,” echoed Washington bench boss Spencer Carbery. “But we still had 20 minutes to go and we were protecting a lead, so we got back to doing things that you need to do to win games in this league.”
Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin will meet again on Mar. 17, but first, the Capitals will host the New Jersey Devils on Wednesday while the Penguins head to Boston to play the Bruins the next night.
Still, every time the two superstars meet turns back the clock to when the matching No. 1 overall picks stormed into the league back in 2005-06.
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