In Washington, DC, the Chicago Blackhawks picked up a quality win on Thursday, 4-3, over the Capitals.
Marc-Andre Fleury made 25 saves in the Hawks win.
Patrick Kane was credited with the deciding goal in the skills competition.
“They tilted the ice here and there, but we stuck to our game plan,” Blackhawks coach Derek King said. “We just kind of played as simple as we could. We still made some mistakes where I would’ve liked to see pucks go in a little deeper, but we stayed in the fight. It was a challenge for us and they rose to the occasion.”
Chicago improved to 8-12-2.
Garnet Hathaway,Nic Dowd, and Garnet Hathaway struck for the Caps goals.
Washington dropped to 14-5-4.
“I thought we got into it in the second period. ‘O’s’ hit got us going,” Capitals head coach Peter Laviolette said. “We were looking for physicality, so we got that going and started putting pucks behind them and able to start playing a better game in the second period.”
Kane had the only goal in the skills competition, the Caps hit iron.
“Just a little bit unlucky,” Washington’s Evgeny Kuznetsov (regulation goal) said. “It’s kind of lottery always, right? We knew that Kane [is] going to have a pretty good chance to score, so I had to at least score one, but it didn’t work out, so I guess we’ll have to practice, get better.”
Seth Jones and Alex DeBrincat scored for the Blackhawks.
“I thought we did a great job of kind of taking the crowd out of it in the first, sticking to our game, keeping it low-eventful,” Jones said. “That’s just giving ourselves a chance. [Fleury] made big saves.”
Dominik Kubalik also scored for Chicago.
Vitek Vanecek made 25 saves in the Caps loss.
“Up in our building, less than 10 minutes to go, don’t allow Grade A’s,” Dowd said. “We don’t need to score another goal. ‘Lavi’s’ preaching that all the time. We’re up by one, we’re in a great spot, we just have to continue to learn.”
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