Lindgren, Capitals shut out Rangers to spoil Laviolette’s return

WASHINGTON -- Charlie Lindgren made 31 saves to help the Washington Capitals to a 4-0 win against the New York Rangers in coach Peter Laviolette’s return to Capital One Arena on Saturday.

Laviolette coached the Capitals the previous three seasons before he and the team agreed to mutually part ways April 14 after Washington missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since the 2013-14 season.

“It was not good from the start to the finish, so no sense dissecting it here publicly,” Laviolette said. “We’ve got a game tomorrow night (against the Los Angeles Kings) and we’ll need to be a lot better.”

Tom Wilson scored his fifth goal in five games for the Capitals (13-8-3), who had lost three straight (0-2-1).

“I just felt like from a total 60 minutes of playing our style of play, everybody on the same page with our structure," Washington coach Spencer Carbery said. "[It was] right up there with one of our most complete games of the year."

Lindgren's shutout was his second of the season. He was facing his brother, Rangers defenseman Ryan Lindgren, for the first time in the NHL and made three saves against him.

“He actually had the first shot on net tonight, which is kind of funny,” Charlie said. “I know I had a good piece but it kind of popped up. I didn't know exactly where it was but then he had another decent look in the second period. So, certainly I knew when he was on the ice, let's just say that.”

Igor Shesterkin made 25 saves for the Rangers (18-6-1), who had not been shut out and have lost consecutive games for the first time this season.

Sonny Milano gave the Capitals a 1-0 lead 43 seconds into the first period when he scored from the bottom of the left circle off a pass across the slot from Martin Fehervary.

Milano was a healthy scratch in Washington’s 5-4 shootout loss to the Dallas Stars on Thursday. Before that, he had gone seven games without a point.

“I thought the [opening] shift set the tone for our entire group,” Carbery said. “Just right away from the puck pressure, good decisions, the execution with the puck … it just got us right into the right mindset for the entire group.”

Anthony Mantha increased the lead to 2-0 at 1:43 of the second period, tipping a pass from Evgeny Kuznetsov past Shesterkin two seconds after a power play ended.

Wilson made it 3-0 at 5:35. He knocked the puck away from Alexis Lafrenière in the Capitals' zone, skated in on a 2-on-1 with Alex Ovechkin, and beat Shesterkin glove side after electing to shoot the puck.

Nicolas Aube-Kubel pushed it to 4-0 at 11:52, scoring glove side with a wrist shot after a deflected puck came to him between the circles.

“We’ve just got to play better,” Rangers forward Mika Zibanejad said. “Just doing, I guess, the simple things more and better. You’re going to have periods where you don’t play well, but you’ve just got to make sure that you don’t shoot yourself in the foot. That’s what we did today.”

Lindgren made 15 saves in the second period.

“Maybe for the last five [minutes] of the second period they tilted it a little bit,” Wilson said. “But for the most part we felt pretty confident with our game the whole night against a good team. So, we’ll just try to keep building on it.”

NOTES: Lindgren is the fourth goalie in NHL history to get a shutout while his brother appeared for the opposing team and the first since Billy Smith of the New York Islanders (against Gord Smith and the Capitals on Oct. 20, 1974). … Washington forward T.J. Oshie played 16:44 and was plus-1 in his return after missing six games because of an upper-body injury. … Zibanejad had his eight-game point streak end (four goals, six assists). … Rangers defenseman Adam Fox played 20:36 and had three blocked shots in his 300th NHL game.