Vanecek, Vrana Help Propel Caps to Victory

Vitek Vanecek stopped 26 of 27 shots, Jakub Vrana supplied the game-winning goal, and the Lars Eller trio contributed a pair of key tallies to help the Capitals to a 3-1 win in Pittsburgh on Tuesday night, ending Washington's four-game losing slide.

In his 11th straight starting assignment, Vanecek made half of his saves in a scoreless first before the Washington offense kicked into gear.
"It's not fun losing, it's fun winning. I was just focusing every time, trying to do my best for the team. And they helped me really a lot today, and we won. That's a good thing."
Vanecek picked up his sixth win of the season and first since Jan. 30, getting a strong defensive performance in front of him.
"I think the effort was really good tonight," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "It seemed like everybody was on point and dialed in and ready to play."
"The Pens pushed a little bit in the third, and Vitek made a couple saves for us that we needed to make. But overall it's pretty good, pretty strong."

Washington's start was somewhat inauspicious. The Caps fell into instant penalty trouble when Zdeno Chara went off for holding in the second minute of the game, and Pittsburgh had a brief two-man advantage when Garnet Hathaway was taken away for goaltender interference some 99 seconds later. But Vanecek stopped all five Pittsburgh bids on the power plays, and the Caps survived the early push from the Penguins.
As the first period wore on, Washington began to establish more time in the Pittsburgh end. Even better for the Caps, they were able to carry some of that territorial momentum into the middle frame, when they also took control of the contest.
Washington drew a quartet of penalties in the second, and although the Caps didn't cash in with the extra man, they put 10 shots on Pens goalie Tristan Jarry while on the power play and broke through twice at 5-on-5.
An assertive shift in the offensive zone produced a 1-0 Washington lead at 4:52 of the second. Caps defenseman Nick Jensen left the right point and followed a loose puck down into the right-wing corner of the Pittsburgh zone, winning a puck battle there and nudging it to Richard Panik a few feet away. Meanwhile, Conor Sheary was stealthily sneaking into scoring position. Panik put it on Sheary's tape, and the former Penguin slipped a shot past Jarry on the short side to give the Caps a lead they would maintain for the remainder of the evening.

The Caps doubled their advantage on a transition tally just past the midpoint of the period, and shortly after their second power play expired. After Alex Ovechkin made an excellent backchecking play to break up an intended pass on a 2-on-1 Pittsburgh rush, Nicklas Backstrom carried back into Penguins ice, leaving the puck for T. J. Oshie high in the zone on the left side. Oshie carried down the wall and made a sublime cross-ice, backhand feed to Vrana, who fired it home from his off wing, putting the Caps up by a pair at 11:31.
"I think we self-inflicted there," says Pens coach Mike Sullivan of his team's middle period performance. "We took four penalties, so eight of the 20 minutes we're in the penalty box there, so almost half the period we're killing penalties. It just takes guys out of the game, it takes guys out of the flow, and it gets tough against a power play as good as Washington's to try to defend that. It gives Washington momentum even when they don't score. We certainly didn't help ourselves in the second period with the amount of penalties that we took."
Early in the third, the Caps extended their lead nine seconds after losing a draw in the offensive zone. Sheary made a good play on the half wall to blunt the Pens' breakout bid, getting the puck to Chara at the left point. Chara went to Panik down low, and he made a perfect feed to Lars Eller, who scored on a one-timer to make it a 3-0 game at 1:09 of the third.

Pittsburgh put on a push in the final frame, but the Caps were still able to carve out some zone time for themselves. The third period was played with a couple of long stretches between whistles, and the Pens finally broke through on one of those when Zach Aston-Reese spoiled Vanecek's shutout bid with 4:55 left.
Washington's rookie netminder made three more stops after that to preserve the victory, the last two of them while the Pens were 6-on-4 while Sheary was in the box for hooking at the conclusion of the contest.
"In the second period, guys were working hard and drawing penalties," says Oshie. "And that comes with the work first, and it's easy to forget that sometimes. You just want to get calls; you see other teams getting calls on you, and I think we're one of the most penalized teams in the league. But sometimes, you've got to work for them and guys were, and the power play was big for us tonight."