WASHINGTON (AP) — Alex Ovechkin scored his 30th career hat-trick, furthering Wayne Gretky’s pursuit of the goalscoring record. Charlie Lindgren recorded his 31st save against his NHL team in his first Washington capitals skating circle around the Montreal Canadiens to his ninth place. -2 Lost Saturday.
Ovechkin’s 804th, 805th and 806th career goals were 88 points back from Gretzky’s long-felt unapproachable mark. He scored six goals in four games to reach 26 goals this season, just past the halfway point of his tenth 50-goal season.
Lindgren took his ninth win in his last 10 starts, stopping former Canadiens teammate Nick Suzuki on a breakaway among several major stops. An undrafted freelancer who signed with Montreal, his agent Lindgren is undefeated in his two games against the organization, which has spent his first five seasons as a professional.
The Capitals dominated briefly between the end of the first period and about five minutes into the second. They made the Canadiens look helpless and haphazard in their zone, and on the seventh goal, multiple Washington players circled the Montreal defenders before Marcus Johansson scored.
After goals from Eric Gustafsson and fourth-liners Garnett Hathaway and Nick Dowd, Ovechkin made it 4-1, center Dylan Strom scored a power-play goal in the second half, and Anthony Mansa scored. Added a goal. Washington went on to win 11 of 13 games to secure a place in the playoffs after an injury struggle.
Gustafsson has six goals and five assists in a season-high seven-game scoring streak for the Capitals. Gustafsson and Strome scored for Evgeny Kuznetsov, who scored for the fifth time in a row.
Dowd’s goal came minutes after his son Louis was shown on video screens to celebrate his third birthday after he shoved the puck into Jake Allen’s pad.
Wisconsin native and former University of Wisconsin star Cole Caulfield scored his 20th and 21st goals of the season for the Canadiens on a five-game losing streak. He is the first Montreal player to score 20 goals in 37 fewer games since Martin Ruszynski and Brian Savage in 1995-96.
Allen conceded nine goals on 38 shots to the Canadiens, who lost eight of nine games.
Notes: Forward Nicolas Ohbe Kuebel was a healthy scratch for the Capitals. Joe Snively replaced him in the lineup for his sixth game of the season, his first since November 15. acted as a substitute for
next
Canadiens: Visit the Nashville Predators on Tuesday night.
Capitals: Wrapping up their three-game homestand against the Buffalo Sabers on Tuesday night.
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Follow AP Hockey Writer Stephen Whyno on Twitter at https://twitter.com/SWhyno.
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