The Washington Capitals are off to a flying start, but their play with the lead lately has been less than ideal. After building multi-goal leads in previous contests and allowing their opponents to come back, on Saturday afternoon the Caps scored five goals in the opening 15 minutes, they took their foot off the gas but staved off a comeback en route to an 7-2 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets.
The Caps came out out of the gate with a dominant first few minutes against a Blue Jacket team that played the night before in Winnipeg. Aliaksei Protas and Dylan Strome connected on tic-tac-toe passing on a mini 2-on-0 with the former opening the scoring less than a minute into the game.