Caps Win Shootout Over Sabres, 4-3

Needing a win on the road on Friday night in Buffalo after consecutive losses on home ice, the Caps relied on the Friday night road formula that served them well a week ago in Carolina. They got a game-tying goal off a draw from Alex Ovechkin that led them to overtime, and then won it 4-3 on an Ovechkin backhander in the shootout.

The main difference in the two games is that Ovechkin's tying tally came late in the second period at even strength tonight, while it came late in the third period on the power play in Carolina.
"I don't think they got much," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette of the Sabres. "They did have a couple of really good looks, and [Ilya Samsonov] needed to make some saves. They had the breakaway and they had a couple of shifts that were extended in our zone.
"They're skilled and they're fast, and their top line is dangerous and they've got speed throughout their lineup."
For the Caps, the main point of Friday's game was to rebound from a poor all-around performance in Tuesday's loss to St. Louis, and they achieved that objective with a strong start and a victory.
"It was definitely a bounce back game," says Caps defenseman Nick Jensen. "We needed to get back on track."
Just ahead of the midpoint of the first period, the Caps started the scoring on a sublime rush goal, going 200 feet and finishing with a flourish. From below his own goal line, Dmitry Orlov threw a long, bounding stretch pass into neutral ice. Anthony Mantha bumped it to Tom Wilson, who carried into Buffalo ice before going cross-rink to Nicklas Backstrom, who entered the zone along the right-wing wall. Backstrom hit Mantha as he was going to the net, and the big winger put a backhander over Dustin Tokarski's outstretched glove hand at 9:15 of the first.

Buffalo pulled even on a rush goal of its own in the back half of the first. Jeff Skinner carried from then half-wall in his own end into Washington territory. His pass to Tage Thompson caromed off the big pivot's skates and came right back to Skinner, who shoveled a backhander from the slot that eluded Samsonov on the stick side, tying the game at 1-1 at 15:49 of the first.
Washington regained the lead early in the second, doing so less than a minute after Samsonov denied Skinner's breakaway bid. The Caps put some heat on the Sabres in their own end, and with some chaos down low and in front, Conor Sheary passed to Dmitry Orlov at the left point. Orlov's shot missed, ccaroming off the glass to Jensen on the right side. Jensen crept up to the top of the right circle before firing a shot through traffic and past Tokarski's glove hand on the short side at 4:06 of the second.
"I saw all their guys collapse because our guys got to the net and caused chaos that forced their wingers and the guys that cover the [defensemen] to collapse down," recounts Jensen. "They were trying to block it, and I saw we had a guy in front. So I just found a lane, and I shot it."
The Caps let loose of the lead when Buffalo scored twice in a span of less than three minutes in the middle of the middle period, doing so with a pair of sustained shifts in the Washington zone. Skinner's second of the night tied it up at 10:23; he fired through Samsonov's five-hole from the right circle after the Caps couldn't clear the zone. At the time of Skinner's second goal, four of the five Washington skaters had been on the ice for a minute and 42 seconds.
At 12:55, Victor Olofsson finished off another lengthy offensive-zone shift for Buffalo, converting a Casey Mittelstadt pass down low to make it 3-2. At the time of that tally, both Caps defensemen had been on the ice for two minutes. Laviolette used his timeout at that juncture, and the Caps settled down soon after.
"They scored two goals, and the two or three shifts prior to that weren't good," says Laviolette. "It was almost like as soon as we went out, we stopped playing. And it was good; the guys responded from that point. We didn't let up very much after that defensively and got back on the attack offensively."
With just under four minutes left in the second, the Caps pulled even on Ovechkin's 41st goal of the season. Evgeny Kuznetsov won a right dot draw, pulling the puck to Ovechkin in the pocket. The Caps' captain instantly cranked a shot past Tokarski, high to the stick side, tying the game at 3-3 at 16:47 of the third. Only a single second of game time elapsed between the puck drop and the red light.

Heading into the third period, Samsonov had 10 saves on the 13 shots he faced to that point. He stopped all five he faced in the third and all five he saw in an overtime in which the Sabres had the puck for most of the five minutes.
In the shootout, Tage Thompson led off with a goal for the Sabres, but Samsonov made stops on the next two. Kuznetsov slowed it down to a crawl and scored to tie it, and Ovechkin duplicated his backhand move from a week ago in Raleigh to send the Caps home with a pair of points.
"It was kind of back and forth," says Skinner of the game. "Their style, they're a tough team to get through the neutral zone on. They clog it up pretty well, so there were stretches there where it seemed like we couldn't get into the zone and create [offensive] zone time. And as a result, we were on our heels a little bit."
Buffalo was vying for its fourth straight win, with each of the previous three achieved beyond 60 minutes. The Caps handed the Sabres just their second shootout loss of the season, and Washington was responsible for the first one, too, a 3-2 decision on their previous trip to town on Dec. 11.