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When the Penguins and Capitals went to Overtime last night, i was not feeling good about it. The Penguins had lost eight straight overtime games in the playoffs, and hadn't won an overtime game at home in the playoffs since 2009. Hell, they had never even won an overtime playoff game at Consol Energy Center since the building had opened.
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I am a loser. I was wrong. The Penguins proved me wrong. Patric Hornqvist proved me wrong.
The play happened so fast, and before I (and Braden Holtby) knew it, the puck was in the back of the net. Let's take a look.
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Early in overtime, with the puck in the offensive zone, the Penguins went for the aggressive attack, and it paid off. Trevor Daley, risking a potential 2-on-1 in the other direction, goes for a shot.
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The Capitals break it up well, and it looks like the puck is going to leave the zone.
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Brian Dumoulin has other ideas, however. He keeps the puck in. Ultra composed play.
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He feeds it to Conor Sheary, who just tries to make a simple play and get the puck towards the net.
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It looked like Mike Weber was going to keep the puck from getting towards the net with a nice break-up. It actually wasn't though. He stopped the puck, but it took a deflection to his left and right into the slot.
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It probably would've been okay if Weber had left this puck be and let someone else come in and clear it out or give Holtby a chance to make a save. Instead, he tried to clear the puck one-handed, and he put it on a platter for Patric Hornqvist.
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Big time goal for Hornqvist. It would've been easy for him to be tempted to go high-glove on Holtby and maybe miss the net. Instead, Hornqvist kept it simple, saw Holtby opening up five-hole and put the puck where he knew he couldn't miss.
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The entire play can be seen below:
What a goal for Patric Hornqvist. It fits the bill of this series so far, in terms of the team taking a lead or winning a game seeming to be the one that capitalizes of a defensive mistake in a timely manner. Hornqvist probably never expected that puck to come to him and he buried it before anyone had a chance to try and marginalize the error.
The Penguins have a massive 3-1 lead in the series, have two days off to get some rest, and are headed to Washington, looking to close it out on Saturday night.
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