clinching a playoff berth<\/a> for the first time since the 2021-22 season and home ice advantage throughout the first round.<\/p>\nEvgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Erik Karlsson, Bryan Rust, Ben Kindel, Parker Wotherspoon, Blake Lizotte and Connor Dewar also missed Saturday\u2019s game against Washington, which kept its faint playoff hopes alive.<\/p>\n
Ovechkin scored a late empty-net goal to pass Ron Francis for the fifth-most road points in NHL history.<\/p>\n
Ryan Leonard scored twice for Washington and became the eighth rookie in team history with 20 goals in a season, Aliaksei Protas scored and Tom Wilson continued a six-game point streak with a goal and an assist, giving him back-to-back 30-goal and 60-point seasons.<\/p>\n
Logan Thompson stopped nine shots for the Capitals, who have won six of their last eight games.<\/p>\n
Anthony Mantha scored his team-best 32nd goal, while Noel Acciari and Kevin Hayes also scored for Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
Arturs Silovs made 25 saves for the Penguins, whose three-game win streak ended. Pittsburgh has wins in six of its last nine games overall.<\/p>\n
Ilya Protas, playing in his second game, scored his first NHL goal on the power play to give the Capitals a 5-3 lead. <\/p>\n
The Penguins showed a video tribute honoring Ovechkin and his longstanding rivalry with Crosby during a television timeout in the second period. Ovechkin received a standing ovation from the visiting crowd, as he stood up from the bench and waved while players tapped their sticks on the ice in appreciation.<\/p>\n
The teams combined for seven goals in the second period, as Pittsburgh scored its three goals on seven shots.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
The Penguins and Capitals meet again in Washington on Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NHL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH (AP) \u2014 Ilya Protas scored his first NHL goal and added two assists as the Washington Capitals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5114],"tags":[278,396,10448,8659,710,8194,2215,191,6770,288,1939,642,1495,5,590,5365,1499,907,19486,287,4,292,15467,2139,12934,562,100,5575,516,768,43,280,564,190,109,5222],"class_list":["post-591531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-washington-capitals","tag-alexander-ovechkin","tag-aliaksei-protas","tag-anthony-mantha","tag-arturs-silovs","tag-ben-kindel","tag-blake-lizotte","tag-bryan-rust","tag-capitals","tag-connor-dewar","tag-dc-wire","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-erik-karlsson","tag-evgeni-malkin","tag-hockey","tag-ilya-protas","tag-kevin-hayes","tag-kris-letang","tag-logan-thompson","tag-maryland","tag-md-state-wire","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-hockey","tag-noel-acciari","tag-pa-state-wire","tag-parker-wotherspoon","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pittsburgh-penguins","tag-ron-francis","tag-ryan-leonard","tag-sidney-crosby","tag-sports","tag-tom-wilson","tag-virginia","tag-washington","tag-washington-capitals","tag-washingtoncapitals"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}