The scoring was sparse, neither team lighting the lamp in
the first period. It was Buffalo who
scored first, taking advantage of springy boards behind the Caps’ net. A drive by Tyler Ennis went wide of the Caps’
net to the right of goalie Braden Holtby, but the puck rebounded hard off the
end boards and out the other side. Matt
Moulson happily accepted the good fortune and chipped a shot that seemed to hit
both John Carlson’s stick and Holtby’s before floating over the line at the
10:15 mark of the second period.
That would be the only scoring in the second period, but Matt
Niskanen tied it for the Caps in the sixth minute of the third period on a
power play. With Mike Green out with an
upper body injury suffered earlier in the game, the Caps were hemming the
Sabres in their own end on the man advantage.
The puck finally made its way to Nicklas Backstrom at the top of the
right wing faceoff circle. Backstrom
laid the puck out for Niskanen, who one-timed a shot that hit the shaft of
defenseman Tyler Myers’ stick and was redirected past goalie Jhonas Enroth’s
glove.
The Caps could not get that second goal though, and Buffalo
made them pay for it. With the clock running
down past the eight minutes to play mark, Buffalo’s Mike Weber chipped the puck
from the red line across the ice and into the far corner to the right of
Holtby. John Carlson and Torrey Mitchell
got tangled up fighting for the puck, giving Brian Gionta a chance to step in
and take control Gionta circled out and
darted across the crease hoping to tuck the puck around around Holtby’s left
pad. Holtby got a pad on the puck, but
it squirted out to his right where Mitchell was lurking. He cut between Carlson and Jason Chimera to
stuff the puck into the open side of the net, and the Sabres had what was the game-deciding
goal in the 2-1 win.
Other stuff…
-- The Caps had a season high 44 shots. They out-attempted Buffalo, 76-46. They won the faceoff battle, 36-24 (60.0
percent). And they lost. Whodathunkit?
-- Alex Ovechkin had eight shots on goal. It was the first time that Ovechkin had as
many as eight shots on goal without scoring one since he failed to score on 12
shots On December 29, 2013 in a 2-1 loss… to Buffalo (in a Gimmick). Ovechkin also had 17 of the Caps’ 76 shot
attempts.
-- Braden Holtby stopped 24 of 26 shots, making it six
straight games in which he has allowed two or fewer goals, tying a career
high. He has a .942 save percentage in
those six games, and his is also just 4-2-0 with this loss.
-- Evgeny Kuznetsov and the amazing shrinking ice time. Kuznetsov came into this game having skated
less than eight minutes in his previous two games. He failed to reach the eight-minute mark for
the third straight game, skating just 7:07.
He had five shifts in the first period, three in the second period, and
two in the third period.
-- The Caps had one power play and scored on it. They have had only five power plays in their
last four games. At the other end, they
faced only one shorthanded situation and killed it off, making it 14-for-14 in
their last six games.
-- Marcus Johansson, who had gone dormant shooting the puck
in recent games, rediscovered his trigger finger. He had five shots on goal, the most since he
had a season high eight shots back on Veterans Day against Columbus.
-- This was the tenth time this season that the Caps held an
opponent to 26 or fewer shots. Their
record in those games is 4-3-3.
-- From the 9:14 mark of the first period to the 7:40 mark
of the second, a span of 18:26, the Caps held the Sabres to one shot on goal.
-- The fourth line of Kuznetsov, Michael Latta, and Eric
Fehr had one shot on goal among them (Fehr).
-- This was the fifth consecutive one-goal decision between
these two teams. The Caps are 2-1-2 in those
games. The four previous decisions went
to extra time, three of them to the Gimmick.
-- On the other side, the Sabres have allowed only four
goals on 108 shots over their last three games, only two of those at even
strength.
In the end…
What did we say in the prognosto?
There is no way… no way… that the Sabres should win this game. What that means is that after passing a test of sorts on the road by scoring late goals to win one-goal decisions on the road, the Caps have to avoid a tendency of playing down to the level of their opponents. The trouble with playing down to the level of the Sabres is that the dive will be so steep and so quick that they are likely to crash and burn.
The 44 shots was misleading.
Yes, Jhonas Enroth played very well, but for all the volume, the Caps
didn’t pay much of a price to get those second chance, greasy goals. The poor ice, a product of a basketball game
played at Verizon Center earlier in the day, made getting the sweet tic-tac-toe
goal more unlikely. And absent that, the
Caps didn’t have much of a “Plan B.” And
in the NHL, that’s a recipe for giving away points. The Caps did just that tonight.