Caps Fly Past Jets, 5-2

Missing seven regular players for the first time this season and traveling on the day of the game for the first time in a few years, the Capitals shrugged off adversity and the Winnipeg Jets, earning a 5-2 victory in Manitoba's capital city on Friday night.

Washington netminder Vitek Vanecek turned in a stellar performance, stopping 40 of the 42 shots he faced, including 19 of 20 shots in the second period, and a number of high danger scoring chances from some of the Jets' most dangerous offensive players.
"Vitek was really good," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "I thought the first period we did the right things, and we came out with the right mindset. They pushed hard in the second period and that's when Vitek was at his best.
"I thought we really reset going out for the third period, and we played a really smart and much more on the attack third period, and a little better job defensively as well."
Washington put together a strong first 20 minutes, drawing a couple of power plays and besting the Jets in terms of possession. Neither team scored in the first, but Vanecek started his pattern of big saves early, denying Nikolaj Ehlers twice before the first television timeout and making another strong stop in the waning seconds of the opening frame on Dominic Toninato.
The Jets tilted the ice on Washington in the second period, but it was the Caps that came out of the second stanza with a one-goal advantage, thanks to Vanecek. Taking a shift as a left winger, Matt Irwin rolled the puck around the back of the Winnipeg net and up the right half-wall where Mike Sgarbossa collected it. Brett Leason found a soft spot in the middle of the ice, and Sgarbossa found the big winger with a perfect feed. Leason did the rest, beating Connor Hellebuyck with a shot from just above the hash marks at 3:11 for a 1-0 Caps lead.
"Sgarbs had it up on the wall, and I saw a few guys go towards him, so I just found the open ice," says Leason. "I ended up with the puck in the slot and just fired it low."
Less than a minute after the Caps killed a phantom slashing call on Connor McMichael, they struck again for a 2-0 lead. Vanecek made a dazzling save on Mark Scheifele, and the Caps took off in transition. The Jets blunted the Caps' initial bid, but failed to get the puck out. Aliaksei Protas kept it in at the right point and quickly fed Daniel Sprong, who settled it and recorded his second short-side snipe in as many games, beating Hellebuyck at 8:43.
Seconds later, Vanecek made another great save, this one on Pierre-Luc Dubois from in tight.
Washington successfully snuffed out another Jets power play in the back half of the middle period, but ex-Cap Brenden Dillon bit the hand that once fed him, taking a feed from Ehlers and scoring on a wrist shot from above the left circle at 14:32 to cut the Washington lead in half.
"It's obviously nice to contribute like that," says Dillon. "Niky made a great play, and I think he's given me about 20 of those this year, so it was nice to finally put one in for him."
Winnipeg outshot Washington 20-9 in the middle frame.
Early in the third, the Jets evened the game on Josh Morrissey's power-play goal, a wrist shot from the high slot at 2:03. To their credit, the Caps made sure that momentum wasn't part of the package on the Morrissey goal.
Laviolette shuffled his lines a bit in the second period, mostly going with three lines in the final frame. All three of those trios were able to get in on the forecheck, generate some chances and get some pucks to the net. That mentality paid off just ahead of the midpoint of the third when Washington regained the lead for good.
On an offensive-zone shift that featured a lot of movement, some opportunistic puck retrievals and some chaos in the Winnipeg end, the Caps bumped the puck out to the point a couple of times. Justin Schultz's shot was blocked, but T.J. Oshie got it back and put it out to the left point for Dennis Cholowski, whose shot rattled around some bodies in front and fell at the doorstep, where Conor Sheary was on the spot to tap it home at 9:09, for a 3-2 advantage the Caps would not relinquish.
"We had a pretty good [offensive] zone shift, our line," recounts Sheary. "I don't really know what happened; it came from the point and Schultzy was going to the net, and it bounced off the post and landed right on my tape. Usually when you go to that area, you get some scoring chances and the puck took a good bounce to me, and I just had to put it into an empty net."
From there, Vanecek made seven more stops and the Caps played some road hockey. They routinely got pucks through neutral ice and got them deep, and often spent some valuable time cycling and forechecking in the Winnipeg end.
Coaching his first game as an NHL bench boss after then abrupt resignation of longtime coach Paul Maurice earlier in the day, interim Jets coach Dave Lowry pulled Hellebuyck with just under three minutes to play, and the Caps quickly took the pressure off Vanecek with the first of two empty-netters.
After Vanecek made a stop on Morrissey, Nick Jensen put the puck up the wall for Leason, who returned the favor to Sgarbossa, feeding the center in neutral ice. Sgarbossa scored to make it 4-2 with 2:40 remaining, and then Sprong teed up Alex Ovechkin for an empty-netter with 50.7 seconds left, extending the captain's point streak to seven and sending the Caps home with two points and a successful 2-0-1 road swing.
Although Lowry lost his NHL coaching debut, he found some silver lining to the night.
"I thought we did play a fast game," says Lowry. "We did put up 40 shots - you're doing something right. It might have taken us a little while to get going. Second period, I thought we did a real good job of playing fast, managing the puck and creating opportunities."