Vrana and Copley Help Caps Past Flyers, 5-3

What a difference a year and a lot of work makes. Two of the Caps' hardest working young players put on an exhibition on Tuesday night against Philadelphia, showing how far they've come in a year and helping to lift Washington to a 5-3 win over the Flyers at Capital One Arena.

Pheonix Copley piled up a single-game career high 37 saves to earn his 10th victory of the season, and Jakub Vrana scored a pair of goals and registered the first three-point game of his NHL career.
At this time last season, Copley was at the start of an 0-6-3 slide while apprenticing with the AHL Hershey Bears. After trading goaltender Philipp Grubauer to Colorado for salary cap relief last summer, the Caps opted to give Copley the opportunity to take over that role in support of Braden Holtby, and the 26-year-old Alaska native has put in the necessary work to elevate his game, and has taken full advantage to establish himself as a bona fide NHL netminder.

Vrana scored 10 goals in the Caps' first 33 games last season, and seemed to be en route to establishing himself as a top six scoring threat. But at this time last season, he was mired in the midst of a 25-game goalless drought, a stretch in which he was a healthy scratch on six occasions and skated less than 10 minutes in four of the games in which he did play.
A year later, Copley's 10 wins are as many as any two of the seven different goaltenders Philadelphia has employed this season. He also has one more victory than Grubauer has for Colorado, in five fewer starts and at a fraction of the cost.
"I just try and do my job every day and try to be a good teammate," says Copley. "When I'm on the ice, try to give them a chance to win and just support the guys and do whatever I can."
Vrana has 14 goals in 42 games this season, second on the team to Alex Ovechkin (30) and one more than he had in 73 games in 2017-18. He is three points shy of matching his career high of 27, established last season. Speed is Vrana's calling card, and it was the prime ingredient in two of his three points on Tuesday.
"You can't always go so fast," says Vrana. "You have to read the situation. Obviously, I try to use it as much as I can. When I see the chance to skate, I do it. I think I'm a good skater and I just try to use it as much as I can."

The Caps scored on their first shot on goal of the game to take a 1-0 lead, but did little for the remainder of the first period, going more than six minutes without a shot attempt at one point, and getting out-attempted 20-8 at five-on-five. Washington also gifted the Flyers a goal, and the Caps went to the room all even at 1-1 after 20 minutes.
Vrana set up the Caps first goal at 4:21 of the first. After Washington iced the puck, the Flyers won the ensuing defensive zone draw, but eight seconds later it was in their net. Vrana jumped off the mark and got to the puck before the Flyers could even possess it after the clean draw win, and he chipped it ahead into Philadelphia ice, creating a foot race with Tom Wilson riding shotgun. Vrana got to the puck first and put it right on Wilson's tape for a back door tap-in and a 1-0 Caps lead.
"I was just trying to keep up with V," says Wilson. "He is a world class skater so you trust that he is going to win his race, and I'm just kind of hoping that he looks up and sees the play at the back door, which he did. It went in. You get the bounces, and you've got to take them when they're going your way."
Philly got that one back near the middle of the period when a Michal Kempny turnover morphed into a two-on-one for the Flyers, and Jakub Voracek tied it at 9:28.
Washington was much better in the second. The Caps were assertive from the start, and they retook the lead at 9:19 on a lengthy offensive zone shift that culminated in T.J. Oshie's deflection of Lars Eller's shot from the right point, putting Washington back up 2-1 at 9:19.
Just over three minutes later, Vrana added to the Caps' advantage when he read and picked off an exchange between Sean Couturier and Claude Giroux high in the Washington zone. Vrana turned on the jets and blazed into Philly ice on a breakaway, beating Flyers goalie Mike McKenna on the glove side to make it 3-1 at 11:22.
With Washington on the power play, Vrana scored again to give the Caps a 4-1 cushion at 15:55. From center point, John Carlson fed Travis Boyd in the right circle. Boyd pushed the puck down to Vrana, parked along the goal line on the right side. With no angle, Vrana bounced the puck in off a miffed McKenna's pad, a goal that turned out to be pretty big in the end.
The Caps are one of the best second-period teams in the league, and the Flyers are one of the worst, and Washington used the middle frame to make the difference in the game.

"The second period has been really integral in the success that we've had so far this year," says Caps coach Todd Reirden. "We really are able to play a much faster game in the second period. We really seem to transition the puck better, and the statistics follow along with that with where we're at with our second-period production."
Washington is now plus-20 (61-41) in the middle period this season while Philadelphia is minus-18 (38-56).
The Caps funneled pucks to Vrana in the third, trying to get him his first hat trick, but he wasn't quite able to finish any of them. Copley had double-digit save totals in every period, and Philly pulled McKenna for an extra attacker late in the third and made it 4-2 at 16:33 when Wayne Simmonds pounded his own rebound behind the Caps goaltender.
With just over two minutes left, it appeared as though Wilson netted his second of the night into an empty net, but Philly issued a successful coach's challenge, and the goal was erased because the Caps winger was offside on the play.
With 6.7 seconds left, Giroux scored on a Flyers power play, a one-timer from the left dot. And with 2.1 seconds left, Oshie fired the puck from the red line into an empty Philly net for his 200th career goal, accounting for the 5-3 final.
A lot of the damage the Caps did offensively on this night came off the rush, but the one that broke the Flyers and sent the Caps on their way to victory was Oshie's first goal, the one that came from sustained offensive-zone pressure. Philly's third defensive pairing of Robert Hagg and Christian Folin had been on the ice for 1:47 each when Oshie tipped Eller's shot through McKenna.
"The biggest thing is we got ourselves in trouble on that second goal with the amount of time we were stuck in our zone," says Flyers coach Scott Gordon. "We have a defenseman who I think was out there for over two minutes, and we just made it way too hard to get out of our zone. We had opportunities to get out and move it forward, and we didn't."