Caps See Sabres Again on Friday
Caps close out homestand and start set of back-to-backs with second game against Sabres in less than a week
Washington finishes off a three-game homestand and starts a set of back-to-backs games on Friday night when it hosts the Buffalo Sabres for the second time in less than a week. The Caps edged Buffalo 4-3 in a shootout decision here last Saturday night.
In between the two games against the Sabres, the Caps dropped a 2-1 decision to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Wednesday night in Washington. The loss to the Pens ended the Caps' five-game winning streak, and also halted Caps captain Alex Ovechkin's career high scoring streak at 14 straight games.
The Caps scored first in Wednesday's game, taking a 1-0 lead on Lars Eller's first goal in exactly a month, early in the second period. Pittsburgh tied it on Sidney Crosby's power-play goal less than three minutes later, and the Pens prevailed on a Bryan Rust pinball goal off a goalmouth scramble with just over a minute remaining in the second period.
In dropping a game to a Metro Division rival, the Caps also saw their streaks of five straight wins against Metro foes and nine straight against Eastern Conference opponents.
"I think both teams had a lot of good looks," said Washington winger Tom Wilson. "The goalies played well. It felt like a good hockey game; both teams were playing well at both ends of the ice. It kind of takes you back to an important time of year last year against a good team. I think both teams are going to show up when we're playing each other."
Washington had a spate of excellent scoring chances, but it ultimately wasn't able to finish enough of them to come away with the win. The Caps' streak of 14 straight games with three or more goals also came to an end with Wednesday's loss, but Washington had its chances, and those chances came off the sticks of its most dangerous and offensively potent players, too.
"It was a good game," said Caps goalie Braden Holtby, "especially at this time of year, more of a playoff mentality. We haven't really had one of those since Vegas, [on Dec. 4] and it's good to have. Obviously you don't want to end up on the losing side, but we did a lot of good things tonight and both teams played really well. So it was a good hockey game to play, one that you can look at and see the positives and the areas where you can have more success and one that you can really learn from."
Washington is now 12-3-0 in its last 15 games. It led in each of its three losses over that span, and it has rolled up a league best plus-17 goal differential at five-on-five over that span. Wednesday was simply one of those nights.
"Sometimes games come down to inches, like everyone says," said Holtby. "At this time of year and right now, we are trying not to focus too much on results and how we're playing, and tonight we did a ton of good things."
Since winning 10 straight games from Nov. 8-27, the Sabres have won only three of 10 games, but they've earned at least a point in six (3-4-3). In the shorter term, the Sabres are 3-1-1 in their last five games. Last Friday night in Washington, the Caps and Sabres engaged in an extremely entertaining hockey game, with the Caps coming away with a 4-3 shootout win at night's end.
Immediately after falling to the Caps here last Saturday, the Sabres headed north to Boston where they had a Sunday night date with the Bruins less than 24 hours later. With backup Linus Ullmark in net, the Sabres took a 4-2 win from their Atlantic Division rivals in Beantown.
Two nights after that, the Sabres were back home to host the Florida Panthers. That one didn't go as well; Buffalo came out on the short end of a 5-2 count. Carter Hutton was back in net for the Sabres against the Swamp Cats, and he yielded four goals on 35 shots. Hutton won eight of the 10 games during Buffalo's winning streak last month, but he has won one of five starts (1-3-1) since then.
Friday night's game in D.C. is also the front end of a set of back-to-back games for the Sabres, who will return home to host the Anaheim Ducks on Saturday night.
