Flames doused by Caps, 5-2 Ovechkin hits for 21st of the campaign

In Calgary, the urgency evaporated for the Flames, and they lost 5-2 to the visiting Washington Capitals on Monday night.

“That’s pretty impressive, I think,” Washington’s Dylan Strome said. “It’s impressive. He’s a world-class player. He’s a Hall of Famer. There’s not many things that hasn’t been said about him, but he keeps doing it, even at age 38. It’s fun to be a part of, fun to watch.”

Charlie Lindgren made 34 saves in the win.

The Caps improved to 33-25-9 off their third straight win.

“It’s a great feeling,” Ovechkin said. “We know it’s not going to be easy. We keep fighting, keep playing. We’ll go game by game.”

Strome staked the Caps to a 1-0 lead at 14:59 of the opening stanza, hitting from the right circle.

In the middle frame, Ovechkin extended pushed the lead to 2-0 at 5:58, scoring off a power play for his 20th.

“Consistency … not just from the scoring part, but also him being in the lineup and being durable and him being able to play game after game after game all these years,” Capitals coach Spencer Carbery said. “Happy for him. He gets his 20th and 21st, and they were huge. We needed every single bit of those two goals tonight.”

The Flames dropped to 33-30-5 off their second straight loss.

“Five-on-5, I thought we did some things that we liked,” Calgary coach Ryan Huska said. “I don’t think we did a good enough job special team-wise. For me, that was the difference in the game. Both our power play in not generating anything for us, but also giving them momentum, and our penalty kill did that, too.”

Whatever flicker there was in Calgary, is gone.

Ovechkin collected his double at 9:16, scoring off another power play for a 3-0 lead to the Caps.

Calgary replied with a strike by Kevin Rooney  at 10:41, scoring off a tip in for a 3-1 deficit.

Washington answered that at 14:22 with a marker form Hendrix Lapierre for a 4-1 lead to the Caps.

“Sonny does some crazy things out there with the puck,” Strome said. “We’re going to call that the alley-oop, I think, from that one. He threw it up there and ‘Lappy’ made a great play to hit it off of one bounce and put it upstairs. There’s nothing much the goalie can do there on that one.”

In the third period, MacKenzie Weegar  trimmed the deficit to 4-2 at 7:13, scoring out high in the slot.

“We knew that they were sort of in the same position we are,” Weegar said. “I wouldn’t necessarily say they were a more desperate team because I thought we did play a good game 5-on-5. They obviously got some good bounces on the power play. I thought our power play, we needed to get one or two there, for sure. I thought our compete and effort was there 5-on-5.”

Tom Wilson added an empty-net strike at 17:31 for the 5-2 final count on the scoreboard.

Dustin Wolf made 28 saves in the loss.

“I’m sure there’ll be a couple more,” Wolf said. “It’s pretty special to play against a guy like that, and obviously didn’t get the result, but that was pretty fun.”