Nicklas Backstrom Stars in Game 1 for Caps

(Caps Outsider)When the Capitals took a 2-0 lead in the first period of their 4-2 win against Carolina on Thursday, it wasn’t a huge shock that Nicklas Backstrom scored two goals – it was the way he scored them.

Very rarely does Backstrom go straight up the middle with a defender on him and shoot a wrister in the top corner. It looked like Andre Burakovsky at his best. Normally, he dishes that off to one of his wingers.

His second goal, on the power play, came with Backstrom right in front of the net and a centering pass from Evgeny Kuznetsov. Again, that’s not a spot Backstrom normally plays in. In fact, he nearly scored in the same spot on the next power play, before Alex Ovechkin got a…