It looked the Washington Capitals were going to be first team to win on the road in the Hurricanes and Caps series.
But the Canes continued to torment Braden Holtby with the frozen rubber, walking away with a 5-2 Game 6 victory for force a seventh game.
The Capitals were unable to hold two different leads but appeared to have tied the game up at 3-3 with less than 10 minutes remaining in the third period.
Alexander Ovechkin, who racked up the Caps' second goal of the game for his fourth of the post-season, went hard to the net and pushed the puck under Petr Mrazek in for a goal. The refs immediately waved the goal off where the Caps then challenged the call.
Following a review in the head offices in Toronto, the decision on the ice stood up, as the NHL released a statement saying Ovi “interfered with Petr Mrazek by pushing his pad, which caused the puck to enter the net.”
You can watch the sequence here.
Later in the third, with the Capitals now trailing 5-2, Ovechkin slashed Carolina’s Saku Maenalanen. Ovechkin then started applauding the refs' decision that promptly got ejected with ten-minute misconduct.
“They make weird calls all game, but not surprised. I don’t want to be bad guy or something, but it wasn’t fun,” Ovechkin said to reporters post-game.
“We make a push, we scored a goal – I think it was clear. But again, it's on referee decisions and they made decisions.”
Capitals coach Todd Reirden chose to take the alternative route, citing Ovechkin's mini-meltdown as a sign of passion and that the Capitals captain openly cares about winning when the stakes are high.
“Four or five years ago, it would be like, ‘Well, why doesn’t he react and get mad?’” Reirden said. “And now he’s unbelievably passionate about trying to do everything he can about pushing our team to the next level and knows that he’s going to do everything in his power to help us do it.”
