Watch Minnesota Wild vs Washington Capitals Live Online

Watch Minnesota Wild vs Washington Capitals Live Online

It's not yet Thanksgiving in the nation's capital and the Capitals stand poised to run away with the Southeast Division unless something changes soon. And considering that not even the absence of Alex Ovechkin has stalled their engines, it's hard to figure what might. Washington even survived a shaky goaltending effort from Jose Theodore on Wednesday and beat the Islanders in a shootout behind the relief effort of young Semyon Varlamov.

What would have been a season-high third straight win was within Minnesota's grasp on Thursday night, as the Wild held a two-goal lead in Tampa Bay heading to the third period. But the Lightning scored twice to force overtime -- including the tying goal from Ryan Malone with the goalie pulled and 14.7 seconds remaining -- and eventually won in a shootout.

It was a wild night at the Verizon Center on Wednesday as Alexander Semin got Washington on the board just eight seconds into the game, the Capitals still managed to fall behind 3-1 after the first seven minutes, they rallied to take a 4-3 lead, gave up the game-tying, power-play goal late in the third and then finally pulled out the victory on a Chris Clark goal in the 11th round of a shootout. Phew! It improved the Caps to 3-1 since Ovechkin came out of the lineup with an upper-body injury.