Caps Clash with Canes in Raleigh
Washington takes aim on a sixth straight win when it concludes a two-game Metropolitan Division road trip on Friday night in Carolina.
By
Mike Vogel
WashingtonCaps.com
Washington concludes a two-game road trip on Friday night in Raleigh when it makes its second and final visit to North Carolina's capital city this season. The Caps face the Hurricanes in the front end of a weekend set of back-to-back games for both teams. The Capitals return to the District to host Montreal on Saturday while the Hurricanes' four-game homestand continues with a visit from the Buffalo Sabres.
The Caps started their journey with an impressive 4-2 win over the New York Islanders in Brooklyn on Tuesday. Matt Niskanen netted his first two goals of the season in the third period of that game, snapping a 2-2 tie. Niskanen scored the game-winner less than two minutes into the third, and he added an insurance strike on the power play with less than two minutes remaining.
Trailing 1-0 after the first period, the Caps scored twice in the first 10 minutes of the second period, and they held the Islanders without a shot on goal for that entire span, too.
"We kept possession of the puck pretty well in the offensive zone," says Caps goalie Braden Holtby, who made 26 saves to earn his 14th victory of the season. "[The Islanders] have started to change their game a bit against us since the playoff series [against Washington in 2015] I guess, where they don't waste a lot of shots too much. They're kind of waiting to create something a little more. It makes it a little hard when it's that way. But I thought our team did a good job of simplifying and keeping things below their goal line and wearing them down. That's usually how you win games."
Getting clutch saves at key moments of the contest is also how you win games, and Holtby made stellar stops on Josh Bailey, John Tavares and Cal Clutterbuck in between Niskanen's two tallies, while Washington was nursing a 3-2 lead in the third period.
"We didn't give them a ton of chances, but we gave up some Grade As," says Niskanen. "Just little stuff coming in from behind the net or on the rush, and they were able to gain some space a few times where [Holtby] had to be really, really sharp. The one out of the corner where he went lateral to his glove side [on Bailey] was one of the better saves I've seen this year.
"You need a goalie to do that for you sometimes. You can be stifling a team for long periods of time, but if you don't get a save on those couple chances that they do get, then it feels like you did all that work for nothing. Great job by Holts to just shut the door there in the third."
Tuesday's win was Washington's fifth in a row, matching the Capitals' season high winning streak. They also won five straight from Oct. 29-Nov. 5. Against Carolina on Friday, the Caps will be aiming for a sixth straight victory, which would be the team's longest streak since last December when it won nine straight games, a run that ended in Raleigh with a 4-2 loss to the Hurricanes on New Year's Eve, 2015.
"It's a nice little week or 10 days here," says Niskanen of the Caps' current streak. "At the start of this thing, we weren't too happy with the way we were playing. Guys were having meetings and coaches were pissed and all this, and we still had a pretty good record. It's better to fix things when you still have a good record; it's a little bit easier. But we're starting to come. Each game we're playing a little bit better, and a little bit better. I thought we generated a lot tonight, a lot of shots obviously and we had the puck a ton. Our game is coming, and that's a good thing."
The Caps' first visit to Raleigh this season didn't go well. The Hurricanes thumped the Capitals 5-1 here on Nov. 12, a victory that set Carolina off on a five-game winning spree during which the Canes surrendered a grand total of just five goals. Carolina hasn't been able to string together consecutive victories since the end of that winning streak; the Canes are 4-5-2 in their 11 games since the streak ended. Since the start of December, the Hurricanes have managed at least a point in five of seven games (3-2-2).
Although they're a game over what passes for .500 in the NHL, the Hurricanes are in seventh place in the Metropolitan Division standings, nine points behind the Capitals for the second wild card playoff berth. Carolina is a single point ahead of the last-place Islanders.
Most recently, Carolina won a wild 8-6 affair from Vancouver on Tuesday night in the Hurricanes' homestand opener. Trailing 5-2 heading into the third period, the Hurricanes erupted for four goals in a span of just 4:40 early in the third period, chasing Canucks goalie Ryan Miller and taking a 6-5 lead in the process.
According to Elias Sports Bureau, the 14 goals scored in Tuesday's Carolina-Vancouver game were the most in any NHL game - regular season or playoffs - in more than five years, since Winnipeg took a 9-8 decision from the Flyers in Philadelphia on Oct. 27, 2011.
Also according to the good folks at Elias, Tuesday's win over the Canucks marks the second time in the last 25 seasons that the Hurricanes (née Hartford Whalers) overcame a three-goal deficit in the third period and went on to win in regulation. On Jan. 11, 2007, the Hurricanes trailed 3-0 heading into the third period of a home game against the Florida Panthers. The Canes went on to win that Southeast Division skirmish by a 6-4 count.
Carolina center Jordan Staal returned to the lineup on Tuesday after a seven-game absence because of a concussion. He skated 16:44 on the night, assisting on Justin Faulk's go-ahead goal and scoring what would prove to be the game-winner midway through the third period.
