ST. LOUIS — Washington Capitals goaltender Brent Johnson found out in his return to St. Louis that Brad Boyes has settled in with his talented linemates quite well.
Boyes tallied a pair of goals for the Blues and the Caps, without three of their top players, stumbled to their sixth loss in seven outings with a 4-3 loss in front of 16,863 at Scottrade Center.
The Blues scored on two of their first four shots against Johnson, who spent three-plus seasons, including a 34-win year in the 2001-02 campaign, in St. Louis. He hadn’t been back to this arena since being traded to Phoenix on March 4, 2004, and ended up stopping 22 of 26 shots in his return.
“It wasn’t the type of game obviously that I wanted,” Johnson said. “They got off to a quick start. They had a few chances early in the game and they popped them in on me.”
After piling up 69 points as a rookie in 2005-06, Boyes took a step back in his second season. Last year he had only 34 points in 62 games with Boston before the Bruins him traded to St. Louis. Now he plays on a line with Keith Tkachuck and Paul Kariya and is flourishing again.
Boyes notched his first goal of the night 45 seconds into the opening period. Brian Pothier’s outlet pass to Nicklas Backstrom was intercepted at the red line by Tkachuk, who set Boyes free on a breakaway with a perfect pass.
A little more than eight minutes later, Eric Brewer put St. Louis up 2-0 with almost an identical shot. Brewer collected a loose puck along the right wall and skated in on a 2-on-1 but elected to wrist a shot over Johnson’s left shoulder.
Boyes put the Blues ahead for good with his second goal of the night at 18:41 of the second period. His ninth marker of the season looked a lot like his eighth — a wrist shot over Johnson’s left shoulder — but this one came from the opposite side of the ice.
Alexander Semin limped to the bench with about 2½ minutes left in the first period, favoring his right ankle, and did not return. He missed six of the first seven games because that ankle was sprained.
Team captain Chris Clark and top defenseman Tom Poti were already missing. Clark did not travel with the team after taking an Ovechkin slapshot in the ear Friday night against Vancouver. Clark does not have a concussion, but does have a lot of stitches and could join the team in Toronto for tomorrow”s game.
Poti missed his second straight game with a groin injury, and John Erskine replaced him in the lineup. He skated for a short time yesterday morning, but he obviously had some discomfort.
“It is not good enough for tonight,” Poti said after the morning skate. “I’ll rest it for another night. I think it is just pulled. It basically feels like [crap]. We’ll just keep trying to loosen it up and heating it up. We’ve treated it twice a day for the past two days.”
Defenseman Mike Green also had a pair of goals for the Caps to help erase a 2-0 deficit. His first of the night came 40 seconds after St. Louis’ second goal and it was a little fluky. Green sent a soft wrist shot through traffic from the right point that Blues goalie Manny Legace had trouble finding.
His second of the night and third of the season came 3:47 into the second period on the power play. After Michael Nylander made a nice play to keep the puck in the zone and Tomas Fleischmann had drawn another pending penalty, Green blasted a slap shot from the left point that beat Legace with the help of a Donald Brashear screen.
Nylander added a 6-on-5 goal with 72 seconds left to halve the lead, but the Caps couldn’t get the puck into the Blues end in the final minute.
After the game, the players held a closed-door meeting that lasted nearly 30 minutes.
“That is between the guys in the dressing room,” Green said. “It is a sense of confidence we need as a unit and we need to carry it onto the ice.”
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