Caps Nip Coyotes, 2-0

John Carlson's power-play goal in the back half of the third period was all the offense Ilya Samsonov would need on Friday night as the netminder stopped all 16 shots he faced, helping the Caps to a 2-0 win over the visiting Arizona Coyotes at Capital One Arena.

In the midst of his pregame media conference on Friday morning, ahead of their game against Arizona, Caps coach Peter Laviolette was asked for his thoughts on the winless Coyotes, who are now 0-7-1 in the wake of Friday's setback. In the course of a 35-second reply, Laviolette used the word "dangerous" three times.
"They're dangerous," he said for the third time. "If you don't play the game the right way, if you're not ready to play, you're probably not going to like the results."
Washington came out and played the game the right way, and the Caps were certainly ready to play, but for more than 50 minutes on Friday night at Capital One Arena, there weren't any results to like or dislike. Despite dominating the Desert Dogs territorially and in terms of possession, the two teams were scoreless as the midpoint of the third period passed.
"We were going out in the third just to stay with it," says Laviolette. "I don't think our guys were frustrated, but sometimes you try to do more than you should, or you get outside of what is working for you. Just staying on point with what we were doing and keeping the pedal down inside of the structure and inside of the system, guys did a really good job.
"We were pressing all night; their goalie played a really good game. You've got to give Arizona credit too, because they played [Thursday] night and they competed hard out there. They were competing for ice. And it came down to the third period, having to find a goal."
Playing for the second time in as many nights after absorbing a 5-1 loss to the Lightning on Thursday night in Tampa Bay, the Coyotes didn't muster much in the way of offense against the Caps on Friday. Former Cap Dmitrij Jaskin notched Arizona's first shot on net four and a half minutes into the first, and it would more than 12 minutes before the Coyotes managed another.
Facing right-catching rookie goaltender Karel Vejmelka for the first time, the Caps were stymied as the former Nashville draft selection continuously snared shots with his catching glove and calmly set aside all 14 shots the Caps sent his way in the first period.
"He was amazing," says Coyotes coach Andre Tourigny. "Without his performance in the first period, we could have been down early."
Arizona entered the game with an anemic penalty kill success rate of 44.4 percent, the lowest by any team through seven games in NHL history. The Coyotes killed three of four Tampa Bay power plays on Thursday night to lift that percentage from an even more lowly 35.7% rate going into the game against the Lightning.
Washington had a pair of power play chances in the first and three more in the second. Despite maintaining time in the Arizona end throughout most of their time with the man advantage and getting several strong looks, the Caps weren't able to finish, weren't able to solve Vejmelka.
At the other end of the rink, Samsonov needed only to stop 10 shots in the game's first 40 minutes, and the Caps owned a lopsided 48-21 advantage in shot attempts at all strengths at that juncture of the contest.
On the night, the Caps blocked as many shots (16) as Samsonov saved, and the Caps blocked nine of those shots in the third period. The biggest one came around the six-minute mark when Trevor vanRiemsdyk made a brilliant boot block on Christian Fischer's look from the slot, with an empty net yawning behind the Washington defenseman.
In the back half of the final period, former Caps forward Liam O'Brien was boxed for holding Lars Eller in the right-wing corner, giving the Caps a sixth power play opportunity. This time, they made good and got on the board.
After taking a feed from Evgeny Kuznetsov, Carlson moved slightly to his right from his center point position. He surveyed, and as Conor Sheary lined up in front of Vejmelka, Carlson let go of a wrister that the goalie wasn't able to find. The shot beat him on the stick side, giving the Caps a 1-0 lead at 12:02 of the third.
"I saw just a [defenseman to defenseman pass] on the blueline," recounts Vejmelka. "He went to shoot, so I just tried to find the puck. I lost it when it shot it, so it was a good shot. It was a good screen by the player in front of me."
"In situations like that, it can be tough not to try to do too much when things are going good, and it's not happening for us," says Carlson. "Sometimes it's going to happen that way and I think we did a great job throughout the third period to lead us into that. The power play - I felt like tonight - probably deserved a little better than we got tonight to begin with."
Forty seconds after Carlson's goal, the Caps had to kill off a hooking penalty to Garnet Hathaway, but they did so with aplomb. With less than half a minute remaining, Alex Ovechkin fired his ninth goal of the season into an empty net to seal the Washington win.
"The PK came up big, a lot of good things in that game," says Tourigny. "We all know [Washington's] power play is deadly. One mistake at the end, and Carlson took a good shot. But if you would tell me before the game we would have [six] penalty kills and give up only one goal, I would probably take that. That's a positive, but unfortunately it was one too many."