Caps Drop Isles, 3-1

Coming home from a long stretch of road hockey to face the hottest and stingiest team in the league, the Capitals figured to have their hands full on Tuesday night against the New York Islanders. Washington was playing for the second time in as many nights and facing a rested Islanders team, and for the Caps, Tuesday's game felt more like the end of the road trip than Monday did.

While the Caps were a bit slow out of the gates, goaltender Ilya Samsonov was sharp from the outset, keeping the game scoreless until his teammates could find their game. Washington outplayed the Isles over the final forty minutes to earn a 3-1 win, its sixth in a row. The victory halted New York's winning run at nine straight and lifted the Caps into a tie with the Isles for the top spot in the East Division standings.

Caps captain Alex Ovechkin continued to hold the hot hand, scoring for the fifth time in the last six games, and netting goal No. 718 of his NHL career to move ahead of Phil Esposito for sole possession of sixth place on the League's all-time goal scoring ledger. Ovechkin also recorded his 1,300th career NHL point, becoming the 35th player in League history to reach that plateau.
"Obviously it's history, it's pretty big numbers, and I'm happy to be in that category," says Ovechkin. "But just move forward; it's done. How I said, it's history."
The first period wasn't the Caps' best, but Samsonov was on his game during what was a high tempo and fast-paced but scoreless 20 minutes. He only had to make 21 stops on the night, and 11 of those came in the first. New York had the only power play opportunity of the period, and there were only 11 draws taken in the opening stanza.
"I liked our first period," says Isles coach Barry Trotz. "I wish we would have come out ahead in the first. I thought we deserved to. We played really well, it had lots of pace to it. We had some really good looks; I thought Samsonov made some real good saves for them."

"He was really good," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette of Samsonov. "He had an excellent game in Philadelphia where he was really, really good. But for me, it was the first period. We were off, and he was on. If he was off, it could have been over after 20 [minutes]. He gave us an opportunity to get our legs under us and to snap to it a little bit."
Midway through the middle frame, the Caps managed a rare 3-on-1 rush against the normally stingy and defensively buttoned-down Islanders. Ovechkin broke the puck out and fed Evgeny Kuznetsov, who gained New York ice, pump-faked, and then put a shot off the far post. T.J. Oshie drove by for an easy tap-in at 10:36, to put the Caps up 1-0 for the fifth straight game. With the assist, Ovechkin reached 1,300 career points.

Washington's power play went to work later in the second, after Mat Barzal took New York's second offensive-zone penalty of the period, a cross-checking call on Nick Jensen. Midway through the power play, Justin Schultz teed one up for Ovechkin, who blasted a one-timer past Semyon Varlamov from his left dot office, putting the Caps up 2-0 and moving past Esposito at 15:24.
When Isles defenseman Scott Mayfield took exception to a clean Richard Panik hit late in the middle stanza, he took out his ire on the Washington winger, doing so post-whistle for the third unwise New York penalty of the period. With a fresh sheet of ice to start the third, the Caps quickly made Mayfield and the Islanders pay for that privilege.
Just 28 seconds into the third, Jakub Vrana went tape-to-tape with Nicklas Backstrom, threading a feed from the right half wall to Backstrom's stick at the back door, enabling the Caps to extend their lead to 3-0 and making the Isles pay for another unnecessary transgression.

"I think we know that with Ovi and the shot over there, that was the one," says Mayfield. "And then they had all [second] intermission; we knew they might draw up a play and have an idea of where to hit us next, and they made a good play on the backside there. They've got a good power play; you can't be taking penalties against them. And when we do, we've just got to get the kills."
New York's Oliver Wahlstrom scored from the slot on an Islanders power play at 4:17 of the third, ending a shutout spell of 107 minutes and 14 seconds for Washington netminders. But that was as close as the Islanders would get on this night.
"I felt they got really good goaltending, their top guys scored - especially on the power play - and made us pay," says Trotz. "And they defended hard enough not to allow us to get the second [goal] and get it close enough to where we could get it tied up."

Having spent most of the last three weeks on the road, Tuesday's home game felt more like the end of a long stretch on the road than Monday's game in Buffalo did.
"For sure," agrees Laviolette. "For sure it was tonight. Tonight was a set up for a tough game, and the guys battled through it. I thought in the first period, we were off a little bit. And then the last 40 minutes I thought was a real gutsy performance, one where you had to dig in, just based on us being on the road for so long and we played last night."