Caps Fall in Shootout, 4-3

After the conclusion of an NHL game, one team's head coach is typically pleased and the other has a laundry list of things that went wrong for his team and things they'll be paying attention to at the next practice session. In that sense, Sunday afternoon's contest between the Caps and the Buffalo Sabres - the fourth meeting in 11 days between the two squads - was a bit of an outlier.

The Sabres came out on top 4-3 in a game that was dominated by special teams and decided in the shootout, and both coaches were fairly pleased with the result. Buffalo lost each of the first three games against Washington this season, and the Caps played Sunday's game without five key regulars, and those factors also played into the postgame outlook from the respective coaches.
"I think you can look at it both ways," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "We left a point on the table. The 5-on-5 play was good, considering the guys that were out of the lineup. At 5-on-5 we were pretty good; it was a specialty teams battle tonight.
"We put another [standings] point on our side and there are some guys [missing]. So I'm real proud of the guys and the way they played tonight. They've battled through adversity here for a couple of games because there are some big names that are out of the lineup, but it did not affect anybody. There is a mindset in there to win hockey games, and the guys played hard to try to get that done."

Buffalo entered Sunday's game with a 1-3-1 record on the season, but the Sabres have been a better team than that mark would indicate.
"We definitely deserved one win out of these four [games with Washington]," says Sabres coach Ralph Krueger. "It wasn't necessarily what I would call a solid or a pretty win, but it was an extremely important one. We had to dig down a few times again after disappointment and found a way. It could be that we come out of this stronger than if this win today would have been an easy one. Overall, [I'm] just really pleased with the heart and the soul but not really with the overall performance tonight."
Washington got on the board first in Sunday's contest. As Buffalo's Taylor Hall went back into his own end to play the puck, he absorbed a crushing hit from Caps winger Garnet Hathaway, taking some of the starch out of his intended hard-around pass. Justin Schultz was able to wait for it to roll around to him at the right point, and he quickly put it on net. The puck had eyes, sliding through Linus Ullmark's five-hole for a 1-0 Washington lead at 6:58 of the first.
It would be the lone 5-on-5 goal of the game.
The Caps kept Buffalo off the board in the first, as Vitek Vanecek stopped all 16 shots he faced, and Washington successfully snuffed out its only shorthanded situation in the first.
In the middle twenty, officials whistled five penalties, all for tripping and with the last four of them coming in a span of just over five minutes. The two sides traded power-play goals, with the Sabres striking on two of three chances and the Caps cashing in on one of two.
Buffalo's Colin Miller tied the game at 1-1 on a center point drive at 10:07 of the second. Less than two minutes later, Washington responded with a power-play goal of its own to retake the lead.
Nicklas Backstrom won a multi-player battle for the biscuit along the right half-wall in the Buffalo end. He pushed the puck back to Schultz at the right point, and the blueliner walked it to the middle and crept in a bit before putting the puck in a perfect spot for a T.J. Oshie redirection from the slot, making it a 2-1 game at 11:51.

"When we win that [puck] battle," says Schultz, "we're going to have an odd-man opportunity. Osh did a great job of getting to the front. I was just trying to shoot for his stick and he got a great tip on it."
Buffalo pulled even for a second time on the power play at 13:04 of the second. Sam Reinhart made a perfect cross-ice feed to Victor Olofsson on the weak side, and the latter beat Vanecek with a one-timer from the bottom of the right circle to square the score.
Once again in the third, the two teams traded power-play goals. Buffalo took its first lead of the game when Eric Staal beat Vanecek with a one-timer from the right dot at 7:24. Like most leads in this Buffalo-Washington series, it was short-lived.
A little over two minutes later, Backstrom tied it with an oddball of a goal off the rush. Jakub Vrana tried to thread a feed to Backstrom who was driving the net just off the left post. John Carlson got a stick on the puck, and it hopped over to Backstrom, who realized he was running out of room. The sly pivot collected the puck below the goal line and quickly whirled and fired from there, banking the puck in off Ullmark to tie the game one last time at 3-3.
Taylor Hall was awarded a penalty shot at 10:33 of the third, but he rang his shot off the iron.
An exciting, eventful and chance-filled overtime turned into a goaltender showcase, as both netminders made some dazzling stops. A total of nine shots were issued in the five-minute 3-on-3, but none went in and the two teams went to the shootout for the second time in as many games.
"We got to the overtime, I thought we had three real good chances anyway to win the hockey game and we didn't put it away," says Laviolette. "You talk about leaving a point, that's what stings for me. The game unfolded, we ended up in overtime and we had chances to win that. Guys made some great plays and made some good looks, and the goaltender made some great saves. Both goalies were pretty good tonight."
This time, the Sabres claimed the extra point when Jack Eichel scored the only goal of the skills portion of the afternoon.
"We definitely got what we deserved after four games with Washington if you look at the overall play of the last two games," reiterates Krueger.