POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Caps 3, Sabres 1

V Is For Victory - It wasn't so long ago that Washington was planning on having a goaltending tandem of Ilya Samsonov and Henrik Lundqvist for the 2020-21 NHL season. And at that time, goaltending was still seen by many as perhaps the most uncertain area of the Capitals' roster, given Lundqvist's age (38) and Samsonov's brief résumé of work - 26 games - in the NHL.

Before the start of training camp in early January, Lundqvist had to step away from hockey for the season to undergo heart surgery. And Samsonov has started just two of Washington's first 15 games, and none of them in the last month after landing on the "unavailable due to COVID protocol list."
Enter Vitek Vanecek, the Caps' second-round (39th overall) choice in the 2014 NHL Draft. After laboring for five years in the minors, Lundqvist's departure opened the door for the 25-year-old Czech native to finally crack an opening night NHL roster, and Samsonov's sudden absence thrusted Vanecek into the No. 1 netminding slot for an indefinite period of time.
Vanecek has been up to the task. On Thursday night at Capital One Arena, he started his 12th consecutive game - the most by a Caps rookie goaltender in more than a quarter of a century - and made 22 stops to help Washington to a 3-1 win over the Buffalo Sabres.
"There were a lot of shots from the outside, and I thought our guys did a really good job of cleaning up in front of him in the [high-danger] area there," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette of Vanecek's performance. "But a goaltender has always got to make some saves, and you need him to make saves.

"I don't think much has changed with him. He has given us an opportunity to win hockey games from the start of the year. But I think what we were trying to do was to out a better game in front of him, and it's been a little bit better the last couple of games. But he has given us a chance. He's done a good job, and he did another good job tonight."
With a 7-3-2 mark on the season, Vanecek has helped the Caps to earn points in nine of his 13 starts this season, and he is tied for the league lead in wins by a rookie netminder; Chicago's Kevin Lankinen also has seven victories.
Biting The Hand - For the second time in as many games, Caps winger Conor Sheary scored against one of his former NHL employers.
In Tuesday's game against the Penguins in Pittsburgh, Sheary scored Washington's first goal early in the second period. He nearly repeated that feat midway through the first frame of Thursday's game against the Sabres, only to be robbed by a dazzling later stop by former Buffalo teammate Linus Ullmark.
But in the third period, Sheary made good on a second opportunity when he put back the rebound of a Lars Eller shot to give the Caps a 3-0 lead.
"Lars said to me on the bench that I deserved that one after getting robbed," recounts Sheary. "But I think it's a good sign that our line is creating chances and I'm getting the opportunities. I don't know what else I could have done; I got all of that shot and Linus made a great save on me. I'll have to let him know about that one. But I was fortunate to get another bounce and to be able to score at the end there."

One - It's been a while since Washington has limited the opposition to a single goal or less in consecutive contests; it didn't happen at all in 69 regular season games in 2019-20. You have to go back to the tail end of the 2018-19 season to find the last such instance.
In the final two games of a four-game homestand, the Caps authored consecutive victories over Philadelphia (3-1) and Carolina (4-1) respectively, on March 24-26, 2019. Braden Holtby was in net for Washington in both of those games.
Struggling Sabres - Buffalo has endured a lot in the early going of the 2020-21 season; the Sabres had six games postponed earlier this month and went two weeks without playing any games before finally getting back to action this week.
Thursday's game in Washington - the opener of a four-game road trip for the Sabres - was Buffalo's third game since their lengthy and unplanned COVID-related pause, and the team has scuffled mightily to produce offense at 5-on-5, even before their hiatus.
The Sabres' lone goal in Thursday's game came on the power play, and Buffalo now has managed only one even-strength goal in its last four games. On the season, the Sabres' total of 15 goals at 5-on-5 in 13 games is by far the fewest in the league.

"It is certainly a confidence level that you need to have here to stick with it in a game where you're not being rewarded for it," says Sabres coach Ralph Krueger. "We really were pleased with the way we came out of the gate; we had good movement, good speed, good puck movement. And as soon as we didn't have the success that we wanted to have, we started complicating things. We were making plays and trying to get touchdowns instead of trying to get short yardage to kind of get down into their end the way we were doing it early on, and it's a tough situation that we're in right now. This is now psychology. This is now persistence and character that we need to have to stick with it."
Buffalo now moves on to the metropolitan New York region where it will play a pair of games against New Jersey sandwiched around a solo contest against the Islanders.
By The Numbers - John Carlson led the Caps with 23:07 in ice time … Alex Ovechkin led the Caps with four shots on net, eight shot attempts and four hits … Nic Dowd and Nick Jensen each blocked two shots to lead Washington … Dowd won six of his nine face-offs (67 percent) on the night.