POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Caps 2, Coyotes 0

Stick To The Plan - Playing for the second time in as many nights and in the midst of a grueling six-game road trip that spans a dozen days, the Arizona Coyotes came into Washington on Friday night. The Coyotes were also lugging a seven-game losing streak (0-6-1) and an historically anemic penalty-kill percentage (44.4%) with them.

But the Coyotes have been outplaying their results in a lot of their games, and they did so again against the Caps. Arizona gave Washington all it could handle in a game that was scoreless for more than 52 minutes, a contest in which the Caps ultimately prevailed by a 2-0 count.
Washington had the puck for most of the night and had six power play chances to three for Arizona, and while the Coyotes did more surviving than thriving during most of the Caps' nine-plus minutes with the man advantage, John Carlson finally broke through and found the back of the net with a center point shot on the sixth of those extra-man opportunities.
Carlson's goal was the game-winner, and it came on Washington's 17th power-play shot attempt and its eighth shot on net with the extra man. Alex Ovechkin added a late empty-netter to make it a 2-0 final.
"I liked our recovery and our hunt level," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette of his team's power play performance. "I thought Conor Sheary did an unbelievable job of just getting on pucks. [After] lost face-offs, he was just tenacious in there at retrieving pucks, and it allowed us to get set up. Ovi probably had eight to 10 whacks at it, [Evgeny Kuznetsov] took a few, Carly took a couple, trying for down low plays in the slot as well. So there were a lot of good things we did, but I think the key is to not get frustrated and just stay with it. And we were able to do that."

Arizona seems to always play the Caps tough; the Coyotes entered Friday's game with four wins in their last five games against the Capitals, including two straight here in Washington. Playing without T.J. Oshie for the first time this season, the Caps were also missing Nic Dowd for the second time this week, and Nicklas Backstrom has yet to suit up this season.
"We are kind of aware going into it that it might be a gritty one," says Caps right wing Tom Wilson. We obviously have a lot of new pieces in the lineup, so we wanted to keep it simple - get pucks to the net.
"It felt like we had the puck the whole night. Their goalie actually played really well. Considering they've had a bit of a tough go of it, he kept them in it and made some huge saves. When it's going like that, you just try and keep going, keep going and then your breaks will come. We finally got one on the power play, and that's a big one at that time in the game and with a bunch of new guys in the lineup. Those are big two points."
A night after taking a 5-1 loss at the hands of the Lightning in Tampa Bay, the Coyotes lost their eighth straight game to start the season (0-7-1). They've still got stops in Carolina, Philadelphia and Anaheim ahead of them on a road journey that has already taken them to Florida, Tampa and D.C.
"We did not play to not lose, we played to win," says Coyotes coach Andre Tourigny. "We played hard, we had good chances, and our puck management got better during the game. If you look at that game, you're in a back-to-back against two elite teams in the League. You would expect at the end of the game to maybe run out of gas or whatever. It was the reverse.
"The first period, we weathered the storm. They were fast; we needed to make a few adjustments. We clogged the middle a little bit more, made a few adjustments in our zone, and the guys did it perfectly. We came out in the second and we had a little bit more momentum. Our PK came up big. The third was probably our best period in terms of possession and creating good stuff. It's a lot of good things, but we're not in this business for moral victories. But we need to see the positives and see where it's coming. We're playing better and better."
Driver 8 -Eight games into the 2021-22 NHL season, Caps captain Alex Ovechkin leads the NHL with nine goals and is tied for the League lead in scoring with 15 points. Ovechkin has collected a point in all eight games, matching the Washington franchise record for longest point streak at the start of a season.

Back in his rookie season of 2005-06, Ovechkin reeled off eight straight games with a point to erase the previous mark of seven games, set by Mike Gartner in 1985-86 and matched by Randy Burridge in 1991-92. Alexander Semin matched Ovechkin's eight-game streak a year later, in 2006-07.
With a goal and an assist on Friday, Ovechkin recorded the 378th multi-point game of his NHL career to move ahead of Luc Robitaille (377) and tie Denis Savard for 24th place on the all-time list. Teemu Selanne and Brett Hull (382) are next on the list; they're tied for 22nd place.
Speaking of Hull, Ovechkin's Friday night goal against Arizona was the 739th of his career, putting him just two behind Hull for fourth place on the League's all-time ledger.
Carry The Zero -Ilya Samsonov stopped all 16 Arizona shots to record his first shutout of the season and the fourth of his NHL career. In doing so, he becomes the first Caps goalie to shutout the Coyotes since Jan. 3, 1997 when Olie Kolzig recorded the first of his 35 career shutouts against the Desert Dogs at USAir Arena.
"It wasn't a lot of work out there," says Laviolette. "but sometimes those games are even harder to stay in and just to stay focused, because all of a sudden then you do have to make a big save. And so he was good, just staying in the game. He made the saves we needed him to make."
The 18 skaters in front of Samsonov combined to block 17 shots, including 10 of them in the third period. Most notably, Trevor van Riemsdyk made a nifty skate boot block of a Christian Fischer shot from the slot about six minutes into the third, when the game was still scoreless.
Samsonov's clean sheet is just the third ever managed by a Washington goaltender against the Winnipeg/Arizona franchise. On Feb. 19, 1988 when the franchise was still based in Winnipeg, Clint Malarchuk whitewashed the Jets by a 6-0 count at Winnipeg Arena.
Fate's Right Hand - A total of 68 goaltenders have seen action in the NHL to this point in the season, and only three of them have right-handed glove hands. One of those three is Arizona rookie Karel Vejmelka, who was excellent in setting aside 30 of the 31 shots he faced in Friday's game.
Some shooters can get a little jammed up mentally when facing a right-handed goalie, and there seem to be fewer of them now than ever. During Ovechkin's rookie season of 2005-06, nine of 91 NHL netminders were right-handed, and four of them started more than half of their team's games that season.
"It's a little bit different," says Wilson. "It throws everything off. Obviously, you have played the game your whole life with the habit of shooting to areas without even having to really look sometimes. And then when he's catching the opposite way, it changes it up. But he made some big saves. I don't know what his story is, but he played well."
Carlson's game-winner went to the stick side and caught the top right corner of the net, and the presence of Sheary in the crease was a huge factor as well.

"Ovi had one on the power play that was labeled on the stick side, too," says Laviolette. "He made some really big saves. We scout on them just like everybody scouts on everybody else. But at the end of the day, he played a good game."
Get Your Wings -Caps winger Brett Leason made his NHL debut on Friday night against Arizona, skating eight shifts totaling 8:40. Skating on a line with Conor Sheary and fellow rookie Hendrix Lapierre, Leason was credited with one shot on net and one blocked shot in his debut.
"I thought he was good," says Laviolette, of the fifth Caps forward to make his debut in calendar 2021. "His size is noticeable out there. He came in and gave us some good, solid minutes. He goes to the net and he is a big guy, and he can compete out there. I thought it was a good first game for him."
By The Numbers - Ovechkin led the Caps with 24:43 in ice time, and he was on the ice for nine minutes of Washington's total of 9:08 of power play time … Ovechkin led the Caps with five shots on net and 11 shot attempts … Wilson led the Caps with four hits … van Riemsdyk led Washington with three blocked shots.