Alex Ovechkin notched his 31st career hat trick and Logan Thompson made 40 saves to lead the Washington Capitals to a 5-2 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights on Sunday night in Las Vegas.
Ovechkin is 29 goals shy of passing Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL scoring record of 894 goals with the 864th, 865th and 866th goals of his career. It also marked the 176th multi-goal game of Ovechkin’s career, 13 shy of Gretzky’s record, and moved him into a tie for the league goal-scoring lead with Florida’s Sam Reinhart and Edmonton’s Leon Draisaitl with 13.
Jakob Chychrun and Jakub Vrana also scored goals and Dylan Strome and Aliaksei Protas each had two assists for Washington, which improved to 6-0-0 against Western Conference teams with its first regular-season win in seven tries at T-Mobile Arena.
Thompson, making his first start at T-Mobile Arena since being traded by the Golden Knights to Washington at the NHL Draft on June 29 for a pair of third-round draft picks, improved to 8-0-1 this season.
Brett Howden and Keegan Kolesar each scored goals for Vegas, which had a two-game win streak snapped. Ilya Samsonov finished with 20 saves.
Washington, which opened a three-game trip with a 5-2 win over Colorado on Friday, jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first period Sunday. Ovechkin made it 1-0 at the 5:59 mark with a power-play goal, firing a shot from the left circle that hit the stick of Vegas defenseman Alex Pietrangelo and sliced inside the near post. Chychrun followed with his fifth goal of the season at 12:26 of the first with a wrist shot under Samsonov’s left arm.
Vegas cut the lead to 2-1 with just eight seconds left in the period when Pietrangelo’s shot caromed sharply off the end boards right to Howden, who backhanded in a shot for his seventh goal.
Vrana made it 3-1 at the 2:49 mark of the second period when he snapped a wrist shot into the far corner from the right circle for his fourth goal. Kolesar cut the lead to 3-2 a little over five minutes later when he scored on a delayed penalty, tucking in a rebound of Jack Eichel’s shot that bounced to him off the leg of Tomas Hertl.
Ovechkin increased the Capitals’ lead to 4-2 near the end of the second period when he ripped a wrist shot from near the right faceoff dot inside the far post at the end of an odd-man rush. Vegas pulled Samsonov for an extra attacker with 2:35 remaining and Ovechkin then notched his hat trick with an empty-netter with 37 seconds left.
