Caps Live to Fight Another Day with 3-2 Win

A furious comeback from an early two-goal hole was just enough for the Capitals to stave off elimination from the Stanley Cup Playoffs on Tuesday night in Toronto. Despite falling down early, the Caps finally found their 'A' game, playing their best hockey of the series for about 40 minutes in a 3-2 win in Game 4.

"I started to see it in the second half of the first period," says Caps coach Todd Reirden, "and we started this to get some good visuals of how we have to play if we're if we're going to continue to be a part of this tournament and be in the playoffs. And when we started to impose our will a little bit and tilt the ice in our favor by getting some offensive-zone shifts, that's mandatory for us to have success as a team."

The start wasn't at all what the Caps were looking for. Before the game was a minute old, Brenden Dillon was in the box for tripping and the Caps were facing an early New York power play. Although Washington's stellar penalty-killing outfit - the only part of its game that has been consistently north of mediocre in these playoffs - killed off the man advantage, the Isles seized the early momentum and were about to put it to good use.

Just ahead of the four-minute mark of the first, the Isles took a 1-0 lead. With New York running the Caps around in the offensive zone, the Isles went low to high, and Scott Mayfield put a right point shot toward the net. Jean-Gabriel Pageau tipped it past Braden Holtby at 3:50 of the first.

It was all New York early. The Isles won 10 of the game's first 11 face-offs and dominated in terms of both territory and possession, so it was no surprise when New York doubled its lead before the first was halfway done.

Mathew Barzal carried from deep in his own end into the Washington side of the rink where he worked a give-and-go with Nick Leddy. Exploiting soft coverage on the rush, Barzal chipped the return feed over Holtby's left pad at 9:16.

For a team that had failed to score more than two goals in any of its six playoff games to this point, the Barzal strike was damning, and Reirden called timeout to try to spark his troops. There was no further bleeding in the first, but the Caps entered the second period still down two goals and on the penalty kill for nearly two full minutes.

But before the Islanders could administer the death blow on the power play, New York came unglued a bit from a discipline standpoint, taking three minors of its own in the first four minutes of the middle frame. During that span, the Caps couldn't convert on a 5-on-3 power play, and the final seconds of a 4-on-3 Washington advantage ticked away as Evgeny Kuznetsov took a John Carlson pass near the top of the circle in his own end.

From there, Kuznetsov glided into Islanders territory, swerving around all three New York defenders and cutting to the cage, where he beat Semyon Varlamov to conclude a dazzling play at 3:35. The 4-on-4 goal halved the Isles' lead to 2-1.

Eleven seconds later, Barzal took his second holding minor of the period a mere 17 seconds after the expiration of his first. With another rep on the power play, the Caps made good and tied the game.

Tom Wilson pulled the puck out of the corner and sent it to the right point for Carlson, who put it on a tee for Ovechkin. From just above his left dot office, Ovechkin drilled a one-timer past Varlamov squaring the score at 2-2.

For much of the remainder of the second, the Caps were buzzing and spending more quality time in the New York end of the rink. They also killed off another New York power play and were able to get to the room all even after 40.

Early in the third, a bit of a track meet broke out as both sides traded chances for a few trips up an down the ice. Seconds after Isles center Brock Nelson fanned on a pass in the slot on a 3-on-2 New York rush, Dmitry Orlov collected the puck and sent Ovechkin off on an odd-man break in the opposite direction. The captain wisely called his own number, firing a laser to the shelf from the inside of the right circle at 3:40, giving the Caps their first lead of the night.

"I think we just stopped thinking about those Corsi or whatever those stats are, and just tried to play fun hockey," says Kuznetsov of his team's Game 4 turnabout. "We try to hold onto the puck, and I don't know, maybe I'm not understanding the hockey. But I think that's how we're supposed to play. It's not about the thousand shots, it's about the possession. It's about to wear them down and it's about to enjoy it and have fun, and that's how we enjoyed the game. If we enjoy the game like that, we're going to have success. If we're not enjoying the game, we're not going to have success."

Having let leads slip away in each of the first two games, the Caps were determined not to do so again. They killed off a fifth New York power play in the third, and limited the Isles to just six shots on net in the final frame, nailing down their first win of the series.

"I know that group very well," says Islanders coach Barry Trotz, "and you look at the goal scorers tonight: Ovechkin with two and Kuznetsov with one. Those are their top players and they were their top players tonight.

"I thought they responded well after the timeout. We didn't have enough pushback, but we got through that period and it was 2-0. We got timely saves by Varly, and I thought the second period we got a power play to start, and then we took unnecessary penalties. That gave them some momentum. They got back on track, and it was a one-shot game after that."