Going into Saturday’s game against the Buffalo Sabres, the Caps knew they would have to play one of their best games of the season if they were to take two points from the NHL’s hottest team, which entered the game playing at a 129-point pace across its previous 47 games (35-8-4).
Buffalo entered Saturday’s game on the heels of a regulation loss to the Senators in Ottawa on Thursday, and it had not suffered the indignity of consecutive regulation losses in nearly four months, since Dec. 8. But after the Caps handed them a 6-2 defeat on Saturday night at Capital One Arena, that no longer holds.
Washington’s six-pack of goals came off the sticks of six different players, and five players had a pair of points. The Caps’ penalty kill was a perfect 5-for-5 despite being tasked with five kills in about 34 minutes of playing time across the final two periods, and Logan Thompson made 37 saves – including the last 27 consecutively – to pick up his 28th win of the season.
“We played a great game for probably, I'd say, 50 minutes,” says Caps center Dylan Strome, who had one of three first-period goals for Washington. “We probably gave up a 10-minute stretch there at the end of the first that wasn't great. But [Thompson] made some big saves, -- even at 3-0, 3-1 – and we just kind of found a way to grind it out.
“We played more our style than the last four or five games or five or six games that we've been playing, giving up a lot of goals. So, we hunkered down in the second and third and found a way to get it done.”
Determined to atone for an off night in New Jersey on Thursday, the Caps came out with some jam early in Saturday’s skirmish with the Sabres. After Thompson made a pair of quick early saves – on Jack Quinn and Tage Thompson – to keep the game scoreless, the Caps’ offense revved up for three goals in a span of 2 minutes and 37 seconds, the first two of which came just 20 seconds apart.
Jakob Chychrun started the scoring when he potted the rebound of an Alex Ovechkin shot at 3:15. Pierre-Luc Dubois fed Ovechkin in the slot, and after Buffalo’s Alex Lyon made the save on the Washington captain, Chychrun pounced on the rebound.
After Buffalo iced the puck, it won the ensuing draw it its end but could not exit cleanly. Ovechkin swept it down low for Aliaksei Protas, and the winger settled it and went cross-crease to Strome for an easy tap-in and a 2-0 lead at 3:35.
Sabres coach Lindy Ruff used his timeout at that point, but at 5:52 Connor McMichael made it 3-0 when he got a favorable bounce off the back wall and deposited it on the short side. McMichael’s goal ended Lyon’s night; he yielded the crease to Colten Ellis after surrendering three goals on five shots in just under six minutes of work.
Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin interrupted the party with a wicked shot from the slot just 38 seconds later, scoring the game’s fourth goal before the first television timeout and carving into the Caps’ lead.
Old friend Beck Malenstyn scored from the top of the paint 12:15 to make it a 3-2 game, and the Caps seemed headed for yet another high-scoring, high-event game.
Washington registered its eighth multi-goal period in its last five games in the first period of Saturday’s game, and the Caps also yielded multiple goals in the same frame for the seventh time across the same span.
By night’s end, the Caps would tack on a ninth multi-goal period – the third.
In more than one recent game, the Caps have built a three-goal lead only to see it evaporate. Tonight, they battened down the hatches tightly and, as Strome stated, they played more their style and they had the Sabres chasing them all night.
Some penalties colored the middle period. After the Caps’ first power play ended early because of a tripping penalty on Ryan Leonard, the two teams were playing 4-on-4 hockey when Protas got loose and took off down the right side of the ice on a 2-on-1 rush, called his own number and fired a laser to the far corner to expand the lead to 4-2 at 6:06 of the second frame.
“I thought the [Protas] goal is probably the biggest moment in the hockey game,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “They get a 2-on-1 at our end, and Cole [Hutson] makes a pretty good play to break that pass up, and we go down and convert.
So, there you go from a 3-2 game, and a 2-on-1 against, to a 4-2 game to give us that two-goal lead. And then there were some moments at the end of that second period that we're able to keep the two-goal lead.”
Those moments included falling into some penalty woes in the back half of the second. Two of them overlapped, and the Sabres were looking at a two-man advantage of 36 seconds in duration. Thompson stopped all 15 shots he faced I the second, and seven of those came on the Buffalo power play, one of them on the 5-on-3.
The Caps kept the burners on in the third. They didn’t convert on a carryover power play, but they showed the sellout crowd a glimpse of the future at 6:26 of the third when Leonard struck on a 3-on-2 rush, ripping home a rocket from the slot with help from Cole Hutson and Justin Sourdif, a goal on which all three Washington rookies had a hand.
And less than three minutes after the Caps’ three youngest players in Saturday’s lineup combined on that goal, veteran Tom Wilson netted No. 29 on the season with a beautiful shorthanded goal. He took a sublime feed from McMichael, deked and tucked a backhander at 8:55 to make it 6-2, as he was upended and went careening into the back wall.
“Our start was phenomenal, the first eight minutes maybe,” says Carbery. “[We were] just really good with our execution, we make a couple of really good plays, got into the offensive zone, turned a few pucks over on the forecheck, had a ton of jump and juice early in that game.”
Saturday’s win was the Caps’ fourth in their last five games, and they’ll head to New York to take on the Rangers on Sunday in the back half of a set of back-to-backs.
As for the Sabres, they clinched their first playoff berth since 2010-11 prior to puck drop on Saturday, and they will now return home to host the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday in what is likely to be a spirited battle for Atlantic Division supremacy.
