Caps Blank Bolts, 4-0

With a two-game slide (0-1-1) in the rear view and a three-day holiday break on the horizon, the Capitals hosted a weary and depleted Tampa Bay Lightning team on Friday night at Verizon Center. And from virtually the opening face-off to the final horn, the Caps were in top form against the Bolts.

Braden Holtby made 23 saves and John Carlson netted a pair of goals as the Caps ensured their losing run would end and their break would be a pleasant one with a complete and convincing 4-0 whitewashing of the Lightning.

The Lightning were missing a plethora of key offensive players and its No. 1 netminder, and the Bolts were also playing for the third time in four nights and the second consecutive night, doing so after a long night of travel. The Caps, as they've done frequently in similar situations this season, took full advantage.

"It's a good win," says Holtby. "We played a good game. Obviously, they were in a tough situation with back-to-backs and a lot of injuries. I thought we simplified our game and it was successful.

There's no such thing as a perfect game in hockey, but the Capitals turned in a nearly perfect first 20 minutes.

Washington got on the board first, taking a 1-0 lead just 55 seconds into the initial frame. With Jay Beagle providing a screen in front, John Carlson's right point shot caught the glove hand of Lightning netminder Andrei Vasilevskiy and fell into the net.

"It's something we talked about, wanting a good start," says Carlson. "They played [Thursday] night. It's huge. It gets everybody into it right away. I'd be interested to see stats-wise what happens when someone scores in that first minute. I think everyone gets a charge regardless, and I thought we played really well most of the game."

Vasilevskiy did an Edward Scissorhands imitation on a couple of early Caps shots, and Washington spent much of the first frame putting heat on the Lightning in its own end of the rink. The Caps took a pair of penalties on that side of the ice sheet in the first, but they managed to kill off both without as much as a shot on net. The Bolts managed just two shot attempts with their four minutes worth of first period power play time; the Capitals blocked both.

Carlson struck again with 4:18 left in the first. A crisp zone entry and some crisp passing work - culminating in a perfect primary feed from Marcus Johansson - set Carlson up for a one-time blast from the top of the right circle, and he did not miss.

The Lightning didn't get its first shot on goal until 13:36 of the first, when J.T. Brown lobbed a 76-footer toward Holtby. The Lightning's only other shot on goal in the first frame was a 49-footer from Cory Conacher in the period's final minute.

Not only did the Caps outscore the Bolts 2-0 in the first, they out-attempted them 18-9 (despite Tampa Bay's 2-1 lead in power play opportunities) outhit them 4-1 and won 10 of the 15 draws in the first.

A night after being down 2-0 to St. Louis after the game's first 20 minutes, the Bolts were in the same spot against the Capitals.

"It's deflating," says Lightning winger Alex Killorn. "It was similar in the St Louis game as well. It seems like we just can't get good starts, and we always seem to go down and we're always fighting back. It's a tough league to fight back in, especially with these teams that are so skilled.

"It's not like they were doing anything crazy, they were playing pretty simple hockey. We've just got to be better. We're happy with the way we've played the couple past games, but tonight it was almost embarrassing the way we came out."

As you'd expect, the Lightning came out with a bit more voltage in the second. The Bolts managed six shots on Holtby in the first 150 seconds of the middle period, but only three more over the final 17 and a half minutes of the frame.

Meanwhile, Washington added to its lead just past the midpoint of the game.

Coming into possession of the puck near the right dot in the Washington zone, Caps defenseman Dmitry Orlov spotted Alex Ovechkin hopping over the boards to start a fresh shift. Orlov executed a high flip to space, lofting the puck into the Tampa Bay zone to spring the Caps' captain on a breakaway. Ovechkin deked and beat Vasilevskiy with a backhander to make it a 3-0 game at 10:48 of the second.

The Caps killed off another Tampa Bay power play early in the third, again holding the Bolts without a shot on net while Johansson was cooling his heels for two minutes; he'd been sent off for interfering with Vasilveskiy behind the Tampa Bay cage.

Another Bolts power play successfully snuffed, Johansson came right out of the box, took a laser sharp feed from Nicklas Backstrom, skated in and sniped a shot behind Vasilevskiy, the last shot of the netminder's night. He was pulled in favor of Kristers Gudlevskis at that juncture.

The Lightning pushed hard late in the game to deny Holtby his third shutout of the season, but he and his mates kept the red light from going on, as Beagle and Carlson both blocked Bolts bids in the final minute of regulation to preserve the goose egg.

"It was good," says Caps coach Barry Trotz. "I think the schedule helped us a little bit. The Lightning played last night and it's not a short trip [from Tampa to Washington].

"We jumped on them early, and we gave them nothing in the first and we got the lead. They had a little push early in the second, and I thought we took it back from them. In the third, I thought we managed it well enough. I thought we had a couple of big penalty kills when the game was still in doubt and that was it."