Caps Get a Point in Wild 7-6 Overtime Loss to Pens

Braden Holtby pitched a 25-save shutout on opening night of the 2018-19 regular season in a 7-0 victory over the Boston Bruins on Wednesday. A night later in Pittsburgh, he surrendered seven goals in a 7-6 overtime loss to the Penguins. But if you watched both games, you know Holtby played better in Thursday's loss than he needed to in Wednesday's win.

"I think systematically, we made some mental errors," says Caps winger T.J. Oshie, whose two third-period goals enabled the Caps to scrape a point out of this barnburner. "You know, you don't usually hear this when that many goals were scored against you, but Holts was outstanding tonight. I think you can honestly say that five or six of [the goals] are directly our fault and there were like five or six that should have gone in that he kept out."

Kris Letang's power-play goal at 1:20 of overtime lifted the Penguins to victory, but all things considered, the Caps are happy to come home with a point. Playing for the second time in as many nights is always fatiguing, but even more so this early in the season.
A night after they vaulted themselves to an early multi-goal lead over the Bruins with a blazing fast start, the Caps found themselves on the other side of that coin in the early minutes of Thursday's game against the Pens.
Pittsburgh grabbed an early 1-0 lead on a Jamie Oleksiak goal just 1:49 into the first period, on the Pens' first shot on net of the night. The Pens narrowly missed getting another goal seconds later, and then Holtby had to make a stop on Sidney Crosby in a one-on-one situation after a giveaway in the Washington end.
It could have been 3-0 for the Pens just over three minutes in, but it wasn't, and the Caps got going at that juncture of the contest. Fifteen seconds after that Holtby save on Crosby, Jakub Vrana collected a lively bounce off the backwall and deposited it behind Pens goalie Matt Murray, enabling the Caps to tie the game at 1-1 on their first shot on net at 3:30.
Less than a minute later, ex-Penguins defenseman Brooks Orpik pounded a loose puck through Murray from center point, giving the Caps a 2-1 lead at 4:18.

Pittsburgh squared the score on a power play just over three minutes later, tying it up on a Jake Guentzel goal at 7:27, but 33 seconds after that, the Caps regained the lead at 3-2 on a sublime slap pass from Christian Djoos to Alex Ovechkin, who netted his second goal of the young season at the eight-minute mark of the first.
With Ovechkin's goal, the two teams had combined for five goals on just seven shots in eight minutes of play. Things settled down on the scoreboard for the rest of the first stanza, but the Caps had the better of the possession and territory. Pittsburgh struggled mightily to exit its zone in the first period, continuously turning it over and gifting the Caps with scoring chances, but Washington was unable to expand that lead.
In the middle frame, the tables turned. Now it was the Capitals who couldn't exit cleanly with consistency, but the Pens too advantage.
Just 30 seconds into the second, Letang tied it at 3-3, beating Holtby on the short side with a left point drive. The Caps responded quickly after each of the first two Pittsburgh goals, and they did so again here as John Carlson scored on a short side snipe off the rush at 3:54, giving the Caps their last lead of the night at 4-3.
Pittsburgh was able to retake the lead with a couple of extended offensive zone shifts where Washington got hemmed a bit and wasn't able to exit its end cleanly.
Guentzel notched his second of the night at 15:09, tipping a Justin Schultz point shot past Holtby to tie it at 4-4. Less than two minutes later, Derick Brassard corralled a rebound of a Dominick Simon shot, and had all the time and space needed to backhand it home from down low, putting the Pens up 5-4 at 16:58.
After limiting the Pens to five shots on net and 13 shot attempts in the first, the Caps yielded 23 shots on net and 35 attempts in the middle stanza. Were it not for a pair of dazzling saves from Holtby - a right pad save on Guentzel and a right arm stop on Bryan Rust - the damage would have been worse.
Penalty trouble - perhaps a by-product of fatigue and the early set of back-to-backs - also plagued the Capitals; they were guilty of each of the last five infractions in the game, with three of those coming in the first half of the third. Just after the expiration of one of those Washington penalties, Pittsburgh's Evgeni Malkin finished off a pretty tic-tac-toe passing play to give the Pens a 6-4 lead early in the third.
The subsequent Washington penalties mostly stalled the Caps' attack, but they were able to tie the game on the strength of two Oshie goals in a span of just 21 seconds. First, Oshie turned a blatant Malkin turnover into an instant goal, firing shot past Murray from the slot with 6:59 left to make it a 6-5 game. Twenty-one seconds later, he made a deft mid-air deflection of a Carlson shot, tying the game at 6-6.
But 19 seconds into the overtime session, Caps center Evgeny Kuznetsov was boxed for hooking Crosby, and 61 seconds later, Letang scored the game-winner on a blast through traffic from center point.

All things considered, it was a good point for the Caps.
"Definitely from just chances and opportunities from them," says Caps coach Todd Reirden, "they really tilted the ice versus us in the second and took some of the momentum. But I'm really proud of our guys for sticking in there, hanging in there.
"It has been an emotional couple of days, and back-to-backs to start the season are really something you can't prepare for. I loved our attitude and our belief in ourselves, and being able to get a point out of there was a big one for us."