Kuznetsov Lifts Caps to OT Win, 4-3

It wasn't always pretty, but at night's end, it was two points for the Capitals. Evgeny Kuznetsov scored on the first possession of overtime, giving the Caps a 4-3 win over the Blue Jackets on Tuesday night in Columbus.

Washington never trailed in the game, but the plucky Jackets kept bouncing back, and they forced overtime with a Johnny Gaudreau goal with 7:16 left in the third, and Columbus threw a couple more scares into the Caps between then and the end of regulation.
At the outset of overtime, Kuznetsov won the center ice draw to give the Caps immediate possession. Marcus Johansson gained the Columbus line with speed, leaving the puck for Kuznetsov just inside the line. From the inside of the right circle, Kuznetsov fired a shot past the outstretched glove of Joonas Korpisalo to give Washington the win, 26 seconds into the extra session.
"It's unexpected, right?" says Kuznetsov, laughing. "Every time you win the face-off in overtime, it's possession, and especially having [Erik Gustafsson] and [Johansson] on the ice; you know they're not going to throw the puck away. We're going to wait, and if nothing opens up, we're just going to change. But eventually Gus and Jojo hold onto the puck, and Jojo makes a nice play. I don't know what happened; I decide to shoot the puck and good things happen."
Entering the game, Washington had been limited to two or fewer goals in each of its last four and in eight of its last 11 games. The Caps struck twice in the first period, getting both goals from their fourth line, and with net front presence delivering net front presents.
"There was a lot of chances," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "I've got to go back and look at it, but I think we were pushing quite a few chances tonight. But the problem is some of ones we gave up, and certainly that top line for them is dangerous. I think we fed that a little bit with the way we played the game, so we could clean that up."
After killing off an early Columbus power play without incident, the Caps grabbed a 1-0 lead just 13 seconds after a draw in their own end of the ice. The Caps got the puck in deep and went in on the forecheck, and Nick Jensen made an alert pinch at the right-wing half wall to keep the puck in the zone. He bumped it to Eller, who put it on net, and Garnet Hathaway tipped it home for a Washington lead at 5:06.
With the secondary assist on Hathaway's goal, Jensen matched his career high with his 21st point of the season (one goal, 20 assists).
In the back half of the first, the Caps doubled their lead on Trevor van Riemsdyk's first of two goals in the game. From his own end, Nicolas Aube-Kubel carried into Columbus ice with speed. He curled off at the right half wall and dropped it for the late arriving blueliner, whose shot clapped off a Columbus stick and found its way past Korpisalo to make it 2-0 at 14:28.
The Blue Jackets answered right back just a dozen seconds later, returning the deficit to a single goal when Andrew Peeke's right point shot caught twine at 14:40.
Washington regained its two-goal cushion on a brilliant offensive zone shift from Evgeny Kuznetsov, who circled the Columbus zone after abruptly halting his own drive to the net. Kuznetsov carried behind the Columbus cage before issuing a between-the-legs dish to the front where van Riemsdyk was camped out at the top of the paint. He chipped it home for the first two-goal game of his NHL career, and his single-season career best sixth of the season.
"We're trying to be more of a five-man attack, and make it a little tougher on teams to know where we're at," says van Riemsdyk. "Especially when Kuzy has the puck, you know he has it on a string and even if you don't see the lane, he has a way of contorting himself, moving his stick, and making lanes for you.
"I just kind of lingered there maybe a little longer than I normally would, and he made a heck of a play. I was just there to tap it in."
Once again though, the prosperity of a two-goal lead didn't last the Caps long. The Blue Jackets closed to within a goal again just over 90 seconds later.
A Washington turnover in the Jackets' end resulted in a 2-on-1 jailbreak for Columbus, and the Jackets executed perfectly, with Mathieu Olivier feeding Eric Robinson at the left post to make it a 3-2 game at 11:03.
The Caps' lone power play of the night came early in the third. And while that man advantage produced some looks, it did not change the score. Both sides had their share of chances early in the third, but the Caps needed some big stops from Lindgren along the way.
Lindgren denied both Boone Jenner and Patrik Laine from the slot in the front half of the third, this after having denied Jenner's bid for the tying tally with an excellent lateral stop in the last minute of the second.
But Gaudreau got loose late in the third after fielding a high flip from Gavin Bayreuther, gaining the zone on a 2-on-1 and beating Lindgren to pull the Jackets even for the first time in the game.
The Caps and Lindgren held on the rest of the way, and Kuznetsov saw to it that they went into their break on a winning note. His seventh goal of the season - and his first in 15 games - was also the first goal he has scored against a U.S.-based team this season.
"In terms of mentally, it's probably important to go into the break with a win," says Kuznetsov. "We had a pretty bad game against Toronto [on Sunday], and every point is better for us right now. It was kind of sad to give up that [Gaudreau] goal, but I believe in our team always, and eventually we got the goal in overtime, which is nice; everybody can smile."