Caps Open up Six-Pack on Isles, 6-3

It's not easy to win games on back-to-back nights in the NHL, and it's harder to do so when the game is against the same opponent. But a night after handing the Islanders a 7-3 defeat at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the Caps doubled down and earned a 6-3 win over New York at Washington's Capital One Arena on Friday night.

Both teams scored a trio of power-play goals, but the Caps had the better of play at five-on-five, and that was the difference. Washington limited the Isles to 13 shots on net at five-on-five and outscored the Isles 3-0 - special teams aside - leaving New York mired in the Metropolitan Division cellar with but a single win in its last 11 games (1-6-4).

Making his first start in five games, Braden Holtby stopped 22 of 25 shots to earn his 30th victory of the season in the Washington nets.

"I thought he was pretty good," says Caps coach Barry Trotz of Holtby. "It was a chunky game in terms of a lot of special teams, and I thought Holts made some real good saves. I thought when we started pulling away and they were trying to inch back in when it was 4-1, he made a couple of good saves that were real timely. I thought he was real solid."

The lone damper on Washington's evening and its fourth straight victory was the loss of center Evgeny Kuznetsov late in the second period. Driving the net on a semi-breakaway, Kuznetsov took a slash on the left arm from Isles defenseman Thomas Hickey before colliding awkwardly into the end boards while leading with the same arm. Kuznetsov left the game and did not return; the Caps said he'd be evaluated further on Saturday.

The Capitals put together a much better start in the first frame of Friday's game, and the result was essentially the same, a one-goal lead after 20 minutes of play.

Washington buzzed the New York net in the game's first minute, creating a pair of high quality scoring chances and drawing the game's first power play just 64 seconds after opening puck drop.

It was the first of three straight power play opportunities for the Caps in the first, but they weren't able to get on the board until the third of those chances. Kuznetsov gained the New York zone with speed on the right side, curling off near the bottom of the right circle. As he whirled, he fed Alex Ovechkin at center point. Ovechkin lined up a wrist shot, and T.J. Oshie tipped it past Isles goalie Jaroslav Halak for a 1-0 Washington lead at 14:33 of the first.

Oshie's goal was his third in two nights, all at the Isles' expense, and his first power-play goal since Jan. 31.

The Caps took that lead to the room, but the Isles tied it up on a Matthew Barzal power-play goal at 5:30 of the second period.

With the score square at 1-1, Isles winger Ross Johnston thought it would be a good idea to stir something up with Tom Wilson, but the ploy backfired when Johnston was assessed an instigator on the sequence, putting the Caps on the power play yet again.

Eleven seconds later, New York's Cal Clutterbuck committed an unwise interference penalty on Oshie, giving the Caps a two-man advantage for 109 seconds. Nicklas Backstrom scored on the five-on-three to give the Caps a 2-1 lead at 7:12 of the second, restoring the one-goal Washington cushion less than two minutes after Barzal tied it.

The next goal was going to be a big one in the scheme of things, and the Caps killed off a Dmitry Orlov roughing minor to make sure the Isles didn't get it. Late in the second, the Caps scored that next goal.

Halak stopped Matt Niskanen's shot from the right side, and Alex Chiasson chipped the rebound wide of the net. But Niskanen collected the puck as he was driving around the back of the New York net, he reset, and then he snapped a shot past Halak's right ear on the short side, doubling the Caps' lead to 3-1 at 17:55 of the second.

Hickey's hack on Kuznetsov gave the Caps a power play with 5.3 seconds remaining in the second, and they made the Islanders pay for that transgression with their third power-play goal of the night. Jakub Vrana wheeled around New York blueliner Adam Pelech, cutting sharply toward the net. As he did so, Halak put the paddle down to poke the puck away, but it rattled off a skate in front and took a membership bounce for Chiasson, who buried it to make it a 4-1 game at 1:46 of the third.

The Isles challenged unsuccessfully on the grounds of goaltender interference, and Washington's three-goal lead stood until Vrana himself made it a 5-1 contest with a dazzler of a goal. Chiasson dug the puck out of a pile in the Washington zone and put it off the wall to space. Victimizing Pelech once again, Vrana outraced the defenseman to the puck, chipping it to the middle of the ice with one hand. Vrana again got to it first, firing a shot back against the grain that beat Halak on the glove side to make it 5-1 just past the midpoint of the third.

Washington took some unwise penalties of its own on this night, and the Isles shortened the gap with extra-man tallies from Brock Nelson and from John Tavares in the third, making it a 5-3 game with 3:46 left. When Holtby stopped Barzal on a breakaway with just over three minutes left, it was all over but the shouting. Isles coach Doug Weight pulled Halak for an extra attacker with 3:19 left, but before the Isles could muster a shot, Lars Eller deposited a long distance shot into the empty net to account for the 6-3 final.

Empty-netters aside, the Caps scored just two goals in three games in their trip through California last week, but they tuned up the Islanders for 13 goals - two of them empty-netters - in two nights. They did so without any lamplighters from Alex Ovechkin or Kuznetsov, their two leading goal scorers.

"It's huge," says Trotz. "For the most part this year, we've had guys go on long dry spells and Ovi has been the consistency to our equation of winning hockey games. It's either we're going to score on the power play or Ovi is going to score with a chip-on from someone else. But there have been some dry spells."

What had been a 1-1 game opened up in Washington's favor because of the Isles lack of discipline and their struggles in their own end at five-on-five. Playing on the road for the second time in as many nights, you've got a chance when the game is close. But once it gets away, it's even tougher to come back.

"It did not get away," declares Weight. "We worked at it. It was poorly officiated."

"You never want to get down," says Isles center Casey Cizikas. "You want to be in the game and for us to get behind there is definitely tough because after kind of a slow start, we started playing well. We started doing the right things, and it just didn't happen."