Caps' Sonny Milano can’t stop going viral

Almost exactly 13 years after his first video, Milano is again going viral for juggling a puck. In the second period of Washington’s game against the Carolina Hurricanes on Friday, center Dylan Strome won a faceoff and drove forward to backhand the puck to Milano.

In an instant, Milano corralled the rolling puck, flipped it up into the air onto his own stick, then juggled it again — sending it over the head of Hurricanes netminder Pyotr Kochetkov.

“What happened,” Milano said after the game, “was what I was trying to do.”

Milano is constantly working on his skills with the puck. For him, plays that other players would never dream of attempting — or even comprehending — are innate; his bemused response to the attention he draws almost suggests the skill comes so naturally to him he doesn’t grasp that his magisterial ability with a round of black rubber is special.

“I think it’s just pretty natural at this point because I practice so much,” Milano said. “Once I saw the rolling puck, that was my decision.”

“He’s been doing that,” Capitals Coach Spencer Carbery said. “If you’ve followed Sonny Milano, he’s been doing that since he was a kid. YouTube videos, the whole deal. We’ll see it every once in a while in practice — he’ll pull off something like that or be off on the side just doing it. From being around him, we get a real good view of his hand-eye coordination and what he’s capable of with the puck in those spots. It was a great play.”

The goal was Milano’s second of the night, and while his first tally wasn’t of the same viral quality, it was nearly as impressive from a skill standpoint. The speed with which Milano recognizes openings and completes plays makes him a threat whenever he has a split-second of time and space. All he needed Friday was a few inches in the top corner of the net to roof a backhand shot from in tight that was coming back out of the net before anyone on the ice — other than Milano — realized he had scored.

“When he’s got that much skill, it just seems like the puck is so easy to find for him,” Strome said Saturday. “He does it in practice all the time, so it’s not surprising. I was pretty stunned when he did that [on the second goal] yesterday. I was on the ground, but I was pretty excited. And even like his first goal, that’s not really an easy play, either, to pick it from behind the net and just go bar down. He’s a special player.”

Milano completed his first career hat trick in the third period, bringing his goal total to 13 in 38 games this year, which puts him on pace for a career-high 17. He signed a three-year contract extension in February 2023 worth $1.9 million per season — a bargain for a double-digit goal scorer who plays a consistent role in the middle six and contributes on the power play. Plus-minus is an imperfect metric, but it’s worth noting that on a team with an overall goal differential of minus-30, Milano is a team-best plus-seven.

The Capitals don’t have many players with the singular, game-breaking skill Milano offers; few players in the league can match his ability to create magic in an instant. A lack of consistency has followed Milano throughout his career, but he has seemed to find something that works for him in Washington. He enjoys trying to pull off the impossible, but the 27-year-old now has a more well-rounded understanding of when he can start juggling and when he just needs to make a simple play.

“We talk to him. He’s pretty smart about it, though,” Carbery said. “He knows the situations that he can be creative. And even the times when he is maybe forcing something or trying something that’s probably not the right situation or time, he usually knows and catches himself.”

“Especially this year, he’s gotten a little bit safer with doing it more when he has a chance on net or more at the right times,” Strome added. “I think last year, he was doing it a little bit in the neutral zone and stuff. It usually works, but sometimes he maybe didn’t need to do it as much.”

Milano isn’t the type to delve deeply into his inner self in interviews, but after the game, as he processed the meaning of his first NHL hat trick, he hinted at the significance. Once a player known only for his viral clips, Milano hasn’t stopped going viral — but now he’s doing it as a key part of Washington’s lineup, making consequential plays at a crucial time of year.

“It’s definitely pretty special for me,” Milano said. “I didn’t know if I was ever going to get that, so I’m definitely pretty happy — especially in a big game like this.”