It wasn’t two points, but Saturday’s 4-3 shootout loss to the Sabres in Buffalo represented a small positive step for the Capitals, who were at least able to scrape a point from the game after dropping each of their three previous games in regulation. The Caps lost hold of an early lead in Saturday’s game at KeyBank Center, but they rallied back to pull even and pick up a standings point.
Buffalo’s Bowen Byram was the lone goal scorer in a five-round shootout, and his tally enabled the Sabres to snap an odd three-game slide in which they lost all three games in overtime by identical 4-3 scores. Saturday’s win over Washington lifts Buffalo to a 5-1-3 mark since it opened the season with three straight losses.
After starting 6-2-0, the Caps are now at 6-5-1 a dozen games into the season.
“I still think we're trying to find ourselves a little bit,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “I know the record was what it was early on, but I'm not fooled by that. We're still trying to find our identity. Some guys are trying to get into a rhythm with their seasons. And it's no secret, we have a lot of guys that are struggling right now, but they're trying to fight their way through it.
“And so that's what I take from this game, is as we're trying to get into the season and get guys going and up to speed and feeling good about themselves, and creating confidence and putting some pucks in the back of the net, as we try to get to that spot, you're going to have to find a way to grind out points and take steps in the right direction. I thought tonight was one. Do we have a long way to go? Do guys have a long way to go individually? Absolutely. But again, we'll take the positives from tonight. I thought it was a positive step.”
If you were late tuning in or getting to your seat at KeyBank Center for Saturday night’s Caps-Sabres tilt in Buffalo, you may have missed quite a bit. Aiming to avoid a fourth straight game of not scoring more than one goal, the Caps unlocked that achievement before the game was two and a half minutes old, grabbing an early 2-0 lead on goals by Dylan Strome and Aliaksei Protas, respectively.
But Buffalo bounced right back with a Tage Thompson tally from the slot just 15 seconds after the Protas goal, cutting the Caps’ early cushion in half.
Caps winger Tom Wilson was boxed for unsportsmanlike conduct early in the first, and Washington snuffed out the ensuing Buffalo power play, with Charlie Lindgren making a snazzy glove snare of an Isak Rosen one-timer from the right flank and a nifty left pad denial of Ryan McLeod’s slot shot to preserve the lead.
Seconds after exiting the box, Wilson dropped his mitts and fought Sabres forward Jordan Greenway, who had delivered an illegal check to the head of Washington defenseman Declan Chisholm. Wilson was assessed an instigator minor, a 10-minute misconduct and a five-minute major for fighting, so the Caps were without both him and Chisholm for the remainder of the first.
All of the above events happened ahead of the game’s first television timeout.
Just after the midpoint of the initial period, Alex Tuch tied the game at 2-2, beating Lindgren from the slot off the rush at 10:02.
When Rosen fired a shot past Lindgren through traffic at 18:45, Buffalo had its first lead of the night, and Rosen had his first NHL goal.
The second period was significantly quieter. Fortunately for Washington, Chisholm returned to the bench and the game in the middle frame.
Late in the second, Lindgren made a couple of key stops to keep the Caps within a goal of their hosts. He thwarted Thompson on a Buffalo power play and made a sprawling save on Jason Zucker a few minutes later.
It took the Caps until the final minute of the second stanza, but they managed to get the game tied up before intermission.
Washington was buzzing the Buffalo zone, retrieving pucks and reteeing them, and putting them back toward the Sabres net. After Sabres goalie Ukko-Pekka Lukkonen made a blocker stop on Matt Roy’s point drive, Martin Fehervary made an alert play, retrieving the rebound and bouncing it off the half wall to himself to keep the Sabres from making the clear. Fehervary put it back to Roy for another shot.
This time, Sonny Milano tipped Roy’s shot past Luukkonen, knotting the game at 3-3 with just 42.6 seconds left in the frame.
Milano’s first goal in a year and a half – since April 13, 2024 against Tampa Bay – was a big one.
Buffalo failed to regain the lead on an early power play in the third; Lindgren made another stop on Thompson to help the Washington penalty kill come away unscathed for a second time in as many nights.
The other side of the power play coin continues to be a struggle for the Caps, who had three power play opportunities in just over 10 minutes in the third period. Once again, the Washington extra man unit couldn’t threaten or to shift momentum, and it had difficulty entering the zone cleanly.
A timely power-play goal could have made for a different result in three of the four games the Caps have lost in succession, including Saturday’s game in Buffalo.
“We've been trying a couple different things,” says Caps forward Connor McMichael of the power play. “I think it's just right now we're not even getting too many good looks, to be honest with you. So I think it's just something we're gonna have to go and keep working at and keep practicing and hopefully turn that around.
Washington’s next chance to pull two points came during a dominant overtime session in which it teed up the first nine shot attempts of the five extra minutes, getting five of them on net.
“We did a good job of defending when they had it,” says Strome of the overtime session. “And they’ve got some guys that are strong on their stick and good on puck. I thought we definitely controlled play, and it was pretty even. I thought we did a pretty good job, just, didn't capitalize. Had a couple 2-on-1s, and ultimately their goalie made some big saves towards the end.”
Ultimately, Lindgren’s work on Saturday – particularly in the final two periods – is what enabled the Caps to come home with a point.
“A couple of those shifts where he freezes it to bail us out of some extended [defensive] zone shifts, I wish we could have found a way to pull one out for him, because he deserved to get the win tonight with how he played, and how he played in the shootout, too. Those are not easy guys barreling down on you – Tuck, Thompson, [Rasmus] Dahlin – pretty good players right there. But he was good.
“We give up three in the first and for him to hold them to that number, I really liked his game. He was tremendous.”
