It definitely didn’t start out that way, but Thursday night’s tilt between the Capitals and the Dallas Stars turned into a honey of a hockey game over the final 40 minutes or so. Finishing up a season-opening three-game homestand, the Caps spotted the Stars an early lead. But they pulled their work boots on in the second and swung the game their way with a gritty, determined effortin a 3-2 Washington victory.

Tom Wilson scored for the third time in as many games, and Taylor Raddysh’s first goal as a Capital was the game-winner. But this one was won in the trenches; the Caps defended a dangerous Dallas team expertly for most of the night, and they paid the price to get to the hard areas of the offensive zone, which led directly to the scoring of each of their last two goals.

Most impressively, they knocked off a second high-octane Western Conference club that swaggered into town with an unblemished record on the season.

“It was a really gutsy win against a really good team,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “You could see throughout that game why they were 4-0, number one, and also why most of that team played in the Western Conference finals last year.”

The first 20 minutes were mostly bereft of flow, though there were a number of icings and offside calls for fans of those elements of the game. Mostly though, coffee sales on the concourse were the highlight of the first frame. It wasn’t a great period at all for the Caps; they went shorthanded twice and weren’t able to do much of anything with a trio of power-play opportunities in the first frame. Even worse, they fell down a goal to Dallas in the waning seconds of the second of those man-advantage opportunities.

Colin Blackwell got loose on a breakaway, and he made an excellent move and finish to give the Stars a 1-0 lead at 12:19 of the first. Dallas had a dozen shorthanded goals last season, tied for second-most in the NHL.

Washington was guilty of three icings before the first television timeout, and it wasn’t able to make Dallas netminder Casey DeSmith do any work until just after the midpoint of the first. The Caps finished with six shots on net in the first, but just one at even strength.

On the other hand, Dallas didn’t generate a whole lot of offense in the first, either.

“I thought in the first, we did fine in handling the strengths of the Dallas Stars, which we had talked about,” says Carbery. “We were fine in that area; we just didn’t do anything to counter that with the puck, offensively.

“I really liked our first period; I thought it was a really good road period,” says Stars coach Pete DeBoer. “I thought they were heavier and harder in the second period, and that kind of turned the game.”

Things could only get better for the Caps in the middle frame, and they got better quickly. In the first minute of the second stanza, the Caps squared the score at 1-1, taking advantage of a rare Miro Heiskanen turnover deep in Dallas ice. Connor McMichael picked off a soft Heiskanen feed, quickly dishing to P-L Dubois. Dubois put on a tee for Tom Wilson, who scored his third goal in as many games, all of them from the slot. Wilson’s third of the season came just 55 seconds into the period.

“Good linemates,” says Wilson of his early season success. “They’re finding me in good spots, and when they’re going in, they’re going in.”

Later in the period, DeSmith got away with tripping Wilson with a leg sweep, denying him a virtually certain second goal of the game. No penalty was called on the play.

Minutes ahead of the midpoint of the middle period, Dylan Strome struck to give the Caps their first lead of the night. From center point, Strome put a seeing eye shot through and around a maze of bodies in front, a shot DeSmith never saw. It caught twine at 6:15, putting the Caps on top by a goal.

“We’ve talked a lot about it since the start of camp, getting guys at the net,” says Strome. “And you can see a lot of our goals this year – I don’t know how many exactly, at least half – we’ve had really good net front [presence] and guys fighting for screens, and it showed.”

Net front presence can lead to net front presents, as it did again – a bit later – for Washington.

Charlie Lindgren made a couple of strong stops to preserve that slim lead in the immediate aftermath of the Strome goal, but Dallas drew even at 13:09 when Jason Robertson pounced on a loose puck in front and buried it to make it a 2-2 contest.

About four minutes after the Robertson equalizer, the Caps regained the lead on Raddysh’s goal, which was the culmination of a lengthy offensive zone shift in which the Nic Dowd line wore down the top Dallas forward trio. With Rasmus Sandin locked and loaded and ready to crank a one-timer, Raddysh wisely opted to sling a wrist shot toward the net from the left point.

Once again, the net front presence was there. Dowd and Brandon Duhaime formed a line in front of DeSmith, and Raddysh’s shot snuck through and found net, just as Strome’s did minutes earlier.

“That was exciting,” says Raddysh. “Coming to a new team, you want to contribute any way you can. And I feel like we’ve been doing that – working hard, our line – and creating some stuff. Tonight, it was nice to finally get rewarded.”

The Caps’ third goal of the frame gave them a 3-2 lead at 17:19; all three Dallas forwards – Robertson, Roope Hintz and Wyatt Johnston – had been on the ice for more than a minute when the red light went on.

For the second time in as many games, the Capitals completely closed the door in the third period. Washington was more assertive offensively in the third tonight than in the Vegas win on Tuesday, but the Caps and Lindgren combined to stymie the Stars the rest of the way. Lindgren made 10 of his 22 saves in the third period, and Washington combined to get in the way of 15 Dallas shots in third, more than half of their total of 29 on the night.

Most notably, Martin Fehervary recorded three of his game-high five blocked shots during one epic late-game shift of nearly two minutes in length. Duhaime also got in the way of a late Dallas drive.

“Some nights, you’re not going to have it,” says Carbery. “Puck plays are just off, pucks are bouncing, your shots are getting blocked, and your passes are in your skates. You’re going to have some nights – out of 82 games – like that, and I felt early on that was one of the nights for us.

“And in those situations, a mature team knows, ‘Okay, we’re going to have to win a different way tonight; it might not be pretty. We’re going to have to go forecheck, we’re going to have to get to the net front, we’re going to have to deliver pucks, and we’re going to have to go through that process.’

“And it’s hard; it takes a lot of effort and it takes a lot of commitment. But I felt like we and our group turned the switch and did that. And that’s how you get two points out of a game like that.”