Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’ll be very curious to see if the Celtics can force a Game 7 tonight in New York without Jayson Tatum.
In today’s SI:AM:
⛳ PGA Round 1 update
🏀 Nuggets force Game 7
🏈 SEC football primer
Canes send Caps packing
Alex Ovechkin’s history-making season won’t end with him lifting the Stanley Cup for a second time.
Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals were eliminated from the playoffs on Thursday night by the Carolina Hurricanes. The Canes scored first in Game 5 before Anthony Beauvillier’s unassisted goal for Washington tied the game later in the first period. The second period was scoreless, as was much of the third, but Andrei Svechnikov broke the tie with two minutes remaining in regulation. Seth Jarvis added an empty-netter to seal the deal.
Carolina dominated the series, out-shooting Washington 148–96. That’s an average of 19.2 shots per game for the Caps. By comparison, they averaged 27.6 per game in the regular season and 27.8 per game in their first-round win over the Montreal Canadiens. The few shots the Caps did put on net, Carolina goalie Frederik Andersen managed to stop. Andersen saved 93.7% of the shots he faced and allowed only five goals.
“Credit to Freddie Andersen: I thought he was the better goalie this series,” Washington goalie Logan Thompson said. “I think I could have been better and made a couple saves in Raleigh and definitely tonight.”
The two goals Thompson allowed on Thursday were on shots that shouldn’t have been particularly hard to stop. Both Jordan Staal’s opening goal and Svechnikov’s game-winner came on shots from tight angles where Thompson left too much of the goal mouth exposed.
The loss marks the end of the Capitals’ best season in years. Washington finished the regular season with 111 points, the best in the Eastern Conference and second behind the Winnipeg Jets for the best record in the NHL. Its .677 point percentage was the team’s best in a full season since 2016–17. It was a remarkable turnaround from last season, when the Capitals backed into the playoffs with a mere 91 points, the worst record for a playoff team in five years.
Washington had one of the most anemic offenses in the league last season, ranking 28th with 2.63 goals per game. This year, though, the Capitals improved significantly on offense, scoring 3.49 goals per game, the second most in the league. Ovechkin is a major reason for that turnaround. He scored 44 goals, tied for third in the league, despite playing only 65 games due to an early-season leg injury. He hadn’t scored that frequently since he led the league in goals in 2019–20, and the boost to his scoring rate at age 39 allowed him to break Wayne Gretzky’s career goals record late in the season after his injury had made it seem like the record would stand until next year.
With Ovechkin on a tear and several of his younger teammates stepping up in unexpected ways (24-year-old Aliaksei Protas scored 30 goals this season after totaling 13 in his first 169 NHL games), the Capitals seemed poised for a deep playoff run. And it had been a while since they’d had any playoff success. They hadn’t won a postseason series since their championship season in 2017–18. They dispatched the Canadiens rather quickly in five games in the first round, but the offense just picked the wrong time to go cold.
“Yeah, it’s tough, obviously,” Ovechkin said. “We have a special group, but obviously, you know, we have our chances. Maybe we don’t execute, maybe luck was not on our side, because I don’t think we played bad hockey. I think we have lots of great chances to get the lead, but it’s tough.”
The best of Sports Illustrated
• John Schwarb listed some winners and losers from the opening round of the PGA Championship.
• Bob Harig wrote about the biggest controversy at the tournament: the organizers’ decision not to allow players to take preferred lies even after rain soaked the course. Players aren’t happy about having to hit balls covered in mud.
• Kevin Sweeney is at the NBA combine in Chicago. These are the players who stood out the most to him in the week’s scrimmages.
• In his SEC football primer, Bryan Fischer explains why Texas (led by Arch Manning) is the favorite to win the conference.
• The Nuggets beat the Thunder to force a Game 7, thanks to a late scoring outburst from an unexpected source: second-year pro Julian Strawther.
• Gilberto Manzano graded the offseason for every team in the NFC East.
• Twins players Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa were involved in a scary collision on Thursday and were placed in the concussion protocol.
• Maryland is reportedly close to hiring an MLB team executive as its next athletic director.
The top five…
… things I saw last night:
5. A nice sliding catch by Rangers outfielder Adolis García.
4. Shohei Ohtani’s two home runs on the night the Dodgers gave away a bobblehead commemorating his 50/50 season. He now has 15 homers on the season, tied with Aaron Judge and Kyle Schwarber for the MLB lead.
3. A’s position player Jhonny Pereda’s 89 mph fastball to strike out Ohtani.
2. The view from in the stands in Winnipeg when the Jets scored the first goal of their elimination game against the Stars. The Jets won to stay alive and force a Game 6 on Saturday in Dallas.
1. Nikola Jokic’s nasty no-look pass in the fourth quarter.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | Alex Ovechkin’s Dream Season Comes to an End.
