POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Flames 4, Caps 3 (OT)

Come Back - Aside from the first period, the Caps played another strong game on Saturday against the Calgary Flames in their first afternoon game of the season. They spotted the Flames a 3-0 lead during a somnambulant first 20 minutes, roared back to tie the game in the second, and couldn't quite muster the go-ahead goal in the third.

In the end, Calgary prevailed 4-3 in overtime when Elias Lindholm completed the hat trick midway through the extra session.
Staring at a scoreboard deficit for the first time in the young season, the Caps responded well to rally from a three-goal ditch and pick up a point.
"You could see what we're capable of there in the second period, where we are playing the right way and everyone is skating," says Caps defenseman Justin Schultz. "We had plenty of chances to even take the lead there, so some positive stuff and some stuff to work on, too."
The Caps have earned at least a point in each of their first five games (3-0-2), and even in losing to the Flames they played well for more of the game than they didn't. Of the 15 full periods the Caps have played on the young season, Saturday's first period is the obvious outlier of the bunch. Calgary posted a crooked number on the scoreboard, and the Flames had a number of shots and looks from in tight while the Caps were held without a shot on net for more than 10 minutes at one point, and the shots they did manage in the first 20 came from distance.
The Caps were much better over the final 40-plus minutes of the game, much more on brand.
"It was good," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette of his team's game after the first. "They're a tough team, a tight team defensively, too. And so you saw two teams competing hard defensively on the puck in the third period.
"It was different games out there. The first was one game, the second was another game and then the third was a head-to-head game. We just couldn't get it done. That's what burns about it, just the one point that got away."
Feels Like The First Time - Near the midpoint of the second period on Saturday, Caps defenseman Martin Fehervary scored his first career NHL goal, doing so in his 11th game in the League. The 22-year-old blueliner was Washington's second-round pick (No. 46 overall) in the 2018 NHL draft, and he debuted as a teenager with the Caps on opening night of the 2019-20 season in St. Louis on Oct. 2, 2019.
Tom Wilson and Alex Ovechkin earned the helpers on Fehervary's first goal. Ovechkin blocked a shot and started the breakout, and Wilson fed the defenseman in the Calgary zone, when a wide lane opened up for him. From the right circle, Fehervary fired to the far side to bring the Caps within a goal of the Flames at 3-2.
The goal came at the end of a 65-second shift for Fehervary, who had the wind knocked out of him from a Blake Coleman hit earlier in the shift, prior to a Calgary icing call.
"It was kind of a hard shift for me," recounts Fehervary. "I got a bad hit, son I lost the breath before we got into our zone. Then we battled that puck and I just tried to join the rush. Willy played it back to me and I heard [Evgeny Kuznetsov] calling me from behind, 'Shoot, shoot, shoot!'
"So I just shoot it, and it went through. I'm really happy."
Power Outage - Since scoring on three of their first five power play opportunities of the season on opening night, the Caps are now 0-for-15 with the extra man in four-plus games since. They've yielded two shorthanded goals in that time as well, so their extra-man unit has actually cost them a pair of goals during the dry spell.
"I'm not sure that if you asked them that they executed the way they want and got the shots they want," says Flames coach Darryl Sutter of the Washington power play, "but I thought we did really good at taking away those diagonal passes they're so good at, and then putting as much pressure up ice as we could to not allow them zone time. I think we had trouble right after face-offs, losing draws which allowed them some time in our zone. But other than that, we were pretty good."
The Caps had a power play opportunity early in the third period after they had tied the game at 3-3, but both shot tries on that man advantage were blocked.
"We're just not executing," says Schultz. "It seems like one bad pass or one bobbled puck and it's back down in our end, and we're having a lot of breakouts. And we're not really executing on the breakouts or the entries, either. Once we get it set up, we're good. But we've just got to get it to that point."
Papa Ain't Salty - Flames goalie Dan Vladar earned his first victory of the season in his first start with the Calgary. With Boston last season, Vladar appeared in the first five games of his NHL career, one of which was an 8-1 shellacking from the Caps in Boston last April.
In the wake of Vladar's Saturday victory, Sutter was asked why Vladar got the starting assignment on Saturday, given his previous history against the Caps, and the fact that the game wasn't part of a set of back-to-backs and No. 1 netminder Jacob Markstrom was coming off a 3-0 shutout in Detroit in his prior start.
Sutter's reply was short and golden:
"I'm sure when you go through it all, you'll also see that Marky has started three in a row, and then you can check out his record against Washington."
Lifetime against the Caps, Markstrom is 1-7-1.
Long, Long Time - Lindholm's hat trick was no surprise to Caps followers; the former Hurricane now has 10 goals and 15 points in 23 career contests against Washington. He has scored more goals against only one other NHL opponent, netting 19 of them in just 29 games, a stat that plays well in Calgary.
Lindholm's hat trick was just the second ever by a Flames player against Washington, and it was the first in more than four decades. The only previous hat trick from a Flames player came more than 43 years ago, when the franchise was still based in Atlanta. On Oct. 14, 1978, the late Tom Lysiak scored three goals on Caps goalie Jim Bedard in a 6-3 Atlanta victory at Capital Centre, in Washington's home opener for the '78-79 season.
Down On The Farm - The AHL Hershey Bears spent Saturday night on the road in Charlotte, taking on the Checkers for a second straight night at Bojangles' Coliseum. The Bears entered the third period of the contest looking up at a 1-0 deficit, but they rallied to win it in overtime.
Midway through the third, Hershey's top line mustered the equalizer. Garrett Pilon netted his third goal of the season at 12:48 of the third to knot the game at 1-1, getting help from Mike Sgarbossa and Joe Snively.
Pilon's goal enabled Hershey to push the game into overtime, and Lucas Johansen won it for the Bears with just 23 seconds left in the third. After taking a feed from Aliaksei Protas, Axel Jonsson-Fjallby motored into Charlotte ice and dropped the puck for the late-arriving Johansen. From between the tops of the circles, Johansen fired a shot past Antoine Bibeau to give the Bears the victory and a split of the two-game weekend set.
Zach Fucale stopped 27 of 28 shots he faced in the Hershey nets to earn his second win of the season in as many starts.
The 3-1-0 Bears are back in action on Wednesday when they host Syracuse at Giant Center.
By The Numbers - Dmitry Orlov led the Caps with 21:44 in ice time … Kuznetsov and Connor McMichael tied for the team lead with five shots on net each, and both players had nine shot attempts in the game, a category in which Ovechkin's total of 10 paced the team … Ovechkin, Garnet Hathaway and Nic Dowd had three hits each to lead Washington … Orlov and Nick Jensen led the Caps with three blocked shots each … Kuznetsov won nine of 14 draws (64 percent) and scored the third shorthanded goal of his NHL career and his first since March 26, 2018.