You’d think the Dallas Stars and Washington Capitals were divisional rivals with the chippy play between the two tonight. Not teams that see each other only twice in the season, and have never played a playoff series against one another (because that would require both going to the Stanley Cup Final to happen).
Maybe Washington was riding the fact that they haven’t won in this building in regulation for an absurd amount of time (8,099 days in fact, as I learned today from Japers Rink, the SB Nation blog that covers the Capitals.) Or it could be that, for whatever reason, games in Dallas are just “weird” when they involve the Capitals.