POSTGAME NOTEBOOK - Caps 4, Jets 3 (OT)

Get Over You - Tuesday's game against the Winnipeg Jets at Capital One Arena marked the 12th time in 40 games this season that the Caps have needed more than 60 minutes to settle the score. It was also the first time the Caps won one of those games in the 3-on-3 overtime session.

The Caps got over their overtime hiccups at the 26-second mark of the extra session when Tom Wilson took a feed from Evgeny Kuznetsov and slipped a shot past Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck to deliver that elusive second point to the Capitals' column. Until Tuesday, Washington was 0-7 in games settled in overtime and it was 2-2 in games that advanced to the shootout stage.
The seven straight overtime losses are a franchise record; after the Caps set the previous mark of five straight extra session setbacks from Nov. 13, 2010 to Jan. 18, 2011 (exactly 11 years before Tuesday night's game), they promptly reeled off 10 straight overtime victories from March 1, 2011 to Dec. 3, 2011.
"Honestly, you don't really think about it much during the game," says Wilson of the Caps shedding the overtime monkey from their collective back. "You never really think you're going to go to overtime. So when you go out there spur of the moment, you try to get it done. But obviously you guys like to talk about it a lot, and it's something we were trying to fix and work on. So it's nice when you can get the first one, and hopefully we can turn it around."

Having lost five of their previous six (1-3-2), the Caps were in need of any kind of win on Tuesday. They had scored the game's first goal in five straight games, but had just one win to show for it ( 1-3-1). They flipped the script a bit against the Jets, and they got the result they needed. They scored second and came from behind to win.
Before the game was three minutes old, the Caps were down 2-0. Washington goaltender Vitek Vanecek closed the door for the next 55-plus minutes, and the Caps went to work.
"Obviously not the start we wanted," says Caps right wing Garnet Hathaway. "That's obvious. But it shows the resilience of this team. We stopped on the bench, and we took a second and we said, 'There's a lot of time left in this game. There's a lot of time. We get [scoring] chances every game.
"[The Jets] have a great rush game. Their counter attacks are really good, and I thought - and you can ask anyone here - that we were a little loose on that. And that's where they got a majority of their chances. It wasn't outbattling us, it was just a couple difficult reads that led to odd man rushes, and we talked about at the intermission, and I think we took them out of their game. I think we played a lot smarter and just limited those types of plays. And in the end, we limited their offense because of it."
Hathaway set up an Alex Ovechkin goal late in the first to halve the Winnipeg lead. Dmitry Orlov scored early in the second to tie the game. And when Aliaksei Protas used his astounding reach to execute a wraparound goal from squarely behind the Jets' net at 4:15 of the third, the Caps had their first lead of the night at 3-2.
Washington completed a late penalty kill to preserve that one-goal advantage, only to see Winnipeg's Pierre-Luc Dubois tie the game with 65 seconds left in regulation. But that Dubois goal gave the Caps a chance to shed that overtime monkey, and they did.
"Serendipitous, I guess," says Hathaway.
Tuesday's game marked the first time this season that the Caps overcame a multi-goal deficit to win a game. They've had a few games where they overcame a multi-goal deficit to earn a point, only to fall in overtime.
Within Your Reach - Protas has played well for Washington in his rookie season, earning the trust of the coaching staff while getting some power play time and being deployed at all three forward positions.
After Tuesday's game, Caps coach Peter Laviolette waxed rhapsodic about the first couple months of Protas' blossoming NHL career.
"Sometimes there's a process that goes with it," says Laviolette. "Players come up, and players go down. The way that we've lived this year -- in regard to COVID and injuries and where we're at -- has provided opportunities. And we chatted this morning; there's been ups and downs.

"I think the important thing is to continue to work with the kids and the younger players, and coach them and teach them and show them, and then put them back in there. And some nights are their nights, and some nights aren't their nights. And I just thought he was really strong tonight. He used his work ethic, he used his skill, he used his size; and that made him very tough to stop."
Great Eight Update - Ovechkin's goal was his 27th of the season, and it came in the Caps' 40th contest of the campaign. He now has 50 career goals in 69 career games against the Atlanta/Winnipeg franchise.
Ovechkin has scored in each of Washington's last three games, the third time this season he has strung together a streak of at least three straight games with a goal. He scored in four straight games - totaling five goals - from Oct. 23-29.
By The Numbers -Nick Jensen led the Caps with 24:11 in ice time, a single-game high for him this season … Trevor van Riemsdyk led Washington with 5:27 in shorthanded ice time … Ovechkin and Wilson led the Capitals with four shots on net each, and Wilson led the way with seven shot attempts … Hathaway, Orlov and Wilson each had three hits to lead the Caps … Ten different players combined to block a dozen shots, with Orlov and Nic Dowd leading the pack with two each … Lars Eller won 10 of 15 face-offs (67 percent).