Overtime is Orlov Time

Down three goals and one player halfway through their Monday night date with the Islanders at UBS Arena, the Caps turned on the jets and clawed their way back into the contest. A trio of tallies and some stellar saves from Darcy Kuemper got the game into overtime where Dmitry Orlov won it for Washington, 4-3.

Working a give-and-go with T.J. Oshie, Orlov carried down low on the right side and shimmied just a bit before beating New York netminder Ilya Sorokin to give Washington the two points in the first meeting of the season between the two Metropolitan Division rivals.
"Osh made a great pass," recounts Orlov. "Their guy was cheating, so I was kind of left alone and when I got it back, I looked at where is the net and where is Sonny [Milano]; maybe we get a 2-on-1. But they kind of went outside, so it was me and the goalie. I just tried to make a move, and it worked well."
Orlov's overtime game-winner is his second this season and the fifth of his NHL career, with all of them coming since the 2019-20 season. He leads the Caps and is tied for sixth in the League over that span.
Washington's start wasn't stellar, but the Caps eventually warmed to the task. New York jumped out to a 1-0 lead before the first television timeout of the first on Sebastian Aho's left point shot at 4:24 of the first.
Caps center Nic Dowd departed the scene with an injury at that point. He returned to the ice briefly to take a quick test twirl during a television timeout, but he left with a lower body injury and did not return.
Just ahead of the midpoint of the first, Kuemper made an excellent stop on Anthony Beauvillier from in tight to keep the deficit at one, but it wouldn't stay there for long.
Five seconds after the Caps iced the puck and lost the ensuing face-off in their own end of the ice, Matt Martin tipped home an Alexander Romanov center point shot at 13:19, doubling the New York lead to 2-0.
Washington killed off the first Islanders power play soon after that, getting out of the first in a two-goal hole. The Caps were limited to just five shots on net in the first, they had only three shots in the last 19 minutes and were held without any for a stretch of nearly 11 minutes.
Early in the second, the Islanders padded their lead again, getting a Hudson Fasching goal off the rush at 3:51, with the shot coming from the bottom of the right circle to make it 3-0.
Midway through the second, the Caps got on the board. After the Isles iced the puck, Washington won a left dot draw, and New York netminder Ilya Sorokin stopped Alex Ovechkin's shot from the slot. But Garnet Hathaway fought off his check to jimmy the rebound through Sorokin's pads and in at 10:01, making it a 3-1 game just four seconds after the face-off.
With the two sides playing 4-on-4 hockey later in the second period, Tom Wilson converted a nifty Nicklas Backstrom feed from behind the net, scoring from the slot at 13:08 of the second to cut the New York advantage to 3-2. The goal was Wilson's first point and Backstrom' second since the duo returned to action just over a week ago, after missing the entire first half of the season.
Playing together on the same line for the second straight game, Wilson and Backstrom spent more time in the offensive zone tonight, hanging onto pucks and creating.
"I think we started feeling a lot more comfortable last game and just didn't get it to go," says Wilson. "Nicky is such a great player, such a smart player. When he has the puck, I just try and stay put, get open, and try and finish it. He put it right on my tape and that's a big goal. Anytime I'm playing with Nicky, it's a privilege. He's one of the smartest to ever play, so it's nice when we can connect and make it go."
In the third, the Caps got another series of critical stops from Kuemper, many of them on Fasching. After stopping the Isles forward in a 1-on-1 situation early in the third, the Caps' goalie signaled that he wasn't quite right, prompting a visit from Caps' head athletic trainer and director of sports medicine Jason Serbus.
"I just kind of got hit in the side of the head with a shin pad coming across me, and then my neck kind of jarred on me," recounts Kuemper. "So I just wanted to talk to Serbs and play it safe."
About two minutes later, the Caps drew even on an extended shift in the offensive zone. After Evgeny Kuznetsov pushed the puck out to Erik Gustafsson at the left point, the blueliner put a low and precise shot toward the slot where Oshie drove by and deflected it home at 5:54.
Kuemper made a couple more stops on Fasching in short succession and also denied Casey Cizikas from the slot to get the game to overtime, and in the first minute of the extra frame, he thwarted a J-G Pageau breakaway bid to keep the game alive, setting the stage for Orlov's heroics, and New York's fourth loss in its last five (1-3-1).
"Obviously we had a great start," says Isles coach Lane Lambert. "The face-off goal [by Hathaway] gave them some momentum, we made a mistake in the 4-on-4 which we can't make, and all of a sudden they're back in the game."
"It was really good," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette of the win. "Not a great start for us and some funny goals - a couple of redirect goals - and you find yourself down 2-0 pretty quick in the game. Then to fight back from down three and just push, we tried to win the second [period], fight and push in the third, and see if we could win a game. The guys never quit on it, and just kept playing hard."
Monday's win was Washington's eighth in its last nine road games, and the Caps will head right back home to host the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday night at Capital One Arena.