Alex Ovechkin heard the chants loud and clear.
”We want 50! We want 50!”
He didn’t need that extra encouragement. Ovechkin scored twice to finish with an NHL-leading 49 goals and played almost the final two minutes of the Washington Capitals‘ 5-3 victory over the New Jersey Devils on Saturday night in each team’s regular-season finale trying to reach 50 for the eighth time in his career.
The Russian superstar will have to settle for his seventh Maurice ”Rocket” Richard Trophy as the league’s top goal-scorer and hopes his recent run continues in the playoffs
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”Effort was there, and you can see I’m ready for playoffs in pretty good shape,” Ovechkin said after a playing 6:04 of the final 8:10. ”Still have a pretty good chance at the end. It is what it is. Whatever. The most important thing ahead of us, and second season right now starts in a couple days.”
Washington won 12 of its final 15 games, and Ovechkin strengthened his Hart Trophy case with nine goals and six assists over that time. At 32, he’s the oldest player to lead the NHL in goals since Phil Esposito in 1974-75.
Ovechkin became the 13th player and first since Mike Gartner in 1990-91 to score exactly 49 goals in a season. His teammates did their best trying to get him to 50, and Ovechkin attempted 18 shots and got eight on net in pursuit of the milestone.
”We look for him a little bit more than usually, but I don’t know,” said center Evgeny Kuznetsov, who assisted on Ovechkin’s 48th goal to reach 56 for the season. ”I don’t think he’s sad about he didn’t get 50, but 49 is still a good number.”
Losing in regulation sends New Jersey to the Atlantic bracket in the Eastern Conference to face the division champion: either the Boston Bruins or Tampa Bay Lightning. It’s the Bruins if they beat Florida on Sunday night, and the Lightning if they don’t.
”We like our matchup against anybody,” Devils center Brian Boyle said. ”I think we match up well against anyone. We believe in what we got going on here. We earned the right to be in. It’s been a good season. The fun starts now.”
The Devils didn’t go all-out to try to move up in the standings
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”There’s a reason that you got here,” coach John Hynes said. ”You have to have a strong identity, which we do. You have to be able to play to that.”
The Capitals’ identity is coming into focus as they go into the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season feeling good about their game. Nicklas Backstrom, Michal Kempny and Andre Burakovsky also scored against New Jersey, and Braden Holtby stopped 23 of the 26 shots in his final chance to show he deserves to be Washington’s Game 1 starting goaltender over Philipp Grubauer.
Holtby is 14-2-2 with a 2.62 goals-against average and .914 save percentage in his career against Columbus, which lost to Nashville in its final game while resting stars Artemi Panarin, Seth Jones and Zach Werenski and two-time Vezina Trophy-winning goalie Sergei Bobrovsky.
”They’re a good young team and they have a great goaltender, but for me it doesn’t matter against who you play,” Kuznetsov said. ”It’s just like a fun time. You prepare all year for this moments.”
NOTES: The Capitals rested RW T.J. Oshie
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UP NEXT
Devils: Open at the Bruins or Lightning in their first playoff appearance since 2012.
Capitals: Host the Blue Jackets to start the first round.
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WASHINGTON — If the Washington Wizards want to improve their playoff position in the final days of the regular season, they can start by beating one of their potential opponents when the Boston Celtics visit Capital One Arena on Tuesday night.
Washington (42-38) has lost four straight to drop into eighth place in the Eastern Conference with games remaining against the Celtics and at Orlando on Wednesday.
An eighth-place finish would match the Wizards with the Toronto Raptors, and seventh place gets them the injury-depleted Celtics (54-26) and sixth place either Philadelphia or Cleveland.
Right now, the Wizards just need to win a game. Friday night’s home loss to last-place Atlanta saw the Wizards plagued by poor defense and a selfish offense.
“Not passing the ball to one another. Simple as that. Nobody wanted to share the basketball tonight,” coach Scott Brooks said. “When you do that, you end up taking bad shots. When you take bad shots, you end up missing. Simple game. You pass it to your teammate.”
Washington, which shot 40.2 percent (35 of 87) from the field against Atlanta, is 6-13 since Feb. 28, a .316 winning percentage. Granted, the team was without John Wall (sitting out the second of back-to-backs) and mostly minus Markieff Morris (ejected after two first-quarter technical) versus Atlanta
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“What’s concerning is how we’ve played the last three or games last week and how we’ve changed from the way we played before,” Wizards guard Tomas Satoransky said. “We are supposed to be playing great for the playoffs, improving in all things and now we are just struggling all over the floor. We have to really change it quickly.”
The Wizards are just a game back of the Miami Heat for seventh and a game-and-a-half behind the sixth-seeded Milwaukee Bucks.
Boston, meanwhile, is locked into second place and coach Brad Stevens is working to prepare his team to enter the playoffs without Kyrie Irving, Marcus Smart and Daniel Theis. He used his regulars for most of the first three quarters against the pesky Hawks on Sunday, and Atlanta rallied from a 13-point deficit to beat Boston 112-106.
“Weird. Yeah, I mean it’s strange,” Stevens said told the Boston Globe of the Celtics having their final position determined with several games remaining. “But, you know, to be able to play those guys and to get them reps and to be able to do some of that stuff — you know, I wish Guerschon (Yabusele) would’ve been available because he would’ve been able to take advantage of that as well.
“But obviously when you start looking down our bench with (Marcus) Morris and Guerschon (sore left knee) out, we’re pretty thin and pretty small. So we needed to give those guys a chance to make plays and I thought they did some good things. But
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According to the Boston Globe, Stevens promised he was going to play his first unit major minutes against Washington given the playoff implications.
Boston is 14-7 without Irving, having posted wins over the Raptors (twice), Portland Trail Blazers (twice), Oklahoma City Thunder and Utah Jazz.
“This team, we’re resilient,” Morris told the Globe. “Everybody on this team is ready to compete. We all feel disrespected. Kyrie, Marcus, Theis — all those guys are major for our team. But they’re not here, so we still have to approach the game as if we’re going to win and get as far as we can.”
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