Caps Host Oilers
Caps conclude set of back-to-backs on Wednesday, hosting Oilers in final game before All-Star break
A night after authoring a thrilling 4-3, come-from-behind overtime victory over the Penguins in Pittsburgh, the Caps face another tall task on Wednesday night at home. Washington hosts the Edmonton Oilers and their high-octane attack at Capital One Arena in the final game for both teams ahead of the All-Star break.
Dmitry Orlov's goal in the final minute of overtime - his second goal of the game - swung a second standings point to the Capitals, giving Washington its first pair of consecutive wins since the calendar flipped to 2022. The Caps' last previous pair of successive wins came right after the holiday break when they downed Nashville at home on Dec. 29 and closed out 2021 with a road win over the Red Wings in Detroit on New Year's Eve.
In claiming two points from the Pens on Tuesday, the Caps overcame the loss of starting goaltender Vitek Vanecek early in the first, a disallowed goal from Nic Dowd in the second, and a trio of power-play goals from the Penguins, who were held at bay at 5-on-5 despite pouring 47 shots - 13 of them on the power play - on Vanecek and Ilya Samsonov, who came on in relief. Samsonov stopped 43 of the 45 shots he faced to pick up his first victory since Dec. 31.
"There were lots of good things just to fight back in the game," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "It seemed like we were fighting back the whole night; there were a lot of things going against us and a lot of adversity, so I give the guys a lot of credit for just staying with it. I thought our best period was in the third, and we did a really good job in overtime as well."
Nic Dowd got the Caps started with a shorthanded goal in the first period, but the lead was short-lived as Pittsburgh pulled even with an Evgeni Malkin goal on the same power play. The Pens took a 2-1 lead on a second power play in the first, with white hot Bryan Rust scoring that one. Orlov's first goal of the game came on a Washington power play late in the first, tying the game at 2-2.
Rust scored another power-play goal early in the second to put Pittsburgh back on top, and the Caps appeared to pull even when Dowd tipped home a Garnet Hathaway point shot, only to have the goal disallowed after Pittsburgh issued a coach's challenge for goaltender interference.
Samsonov was at his best in the second, stopping 22 of 23 shots and eight of nine while Pittsburgh was on the man advantage. Caps winger Daniel Sprong - a former Penguin - scored a huge goal in the final minute of the middle period to send the Caps into the third all even.
After a scoreless third, Orlov finished off the Pens with a shot from the slot at 4:17 of overtime. Now the Caps will face a rested Oilers squad, but they'll do so on the heels of an uplifting victory in which they overcame more than their share of obstacles. That should give them a bit of a bump on Wednesday against Edmonton.
"Always when you play back-to-back and you win the first game," says Caps center Evgeny Kuznetsov. "[Wednesday] is a new day and a new opportunity. There is no excuses, like the coach says, and we have to perform and against which opponent, it doesn't matter. They're going to come out hard and we've got to be ready."
After rolling out of the starting gate with a 9-1-0 record in its first 10 games, Edmonton struggled mightily for a long stretch beginning in early December. The Oilers lost six straight in regulation early in the month, and they lost seven in a row (0-5-2) around the turn of the calendar and into January.
A 5-2 victory over the Penguins on home ice on Dec. 1 left the Oilers with an impressive 16-6-0 mark over the season's first quarter, but Edmonton has won only six of 19 games (6-10-3) since. Wednesday's game is the conclusion of a three-game road trip for the Oilers, who won their fourth straight game on Saturday in Montreal to start the trip. Edmonton had its streak snapped on Monday night in Ottawa in a 3-2 overtime loss to the Senators.
Edmonton averages 3.27 goals per game, ranking 10th in the NHL in that department. The Oilers' power play clicks at a rate of 27.8 percent this season, but it has been dry in its last four games (0-for-10) and it is just 3-for-24 (12.5%) in its last dozen games.
Wednesday's game is the first meeting between the Caps and Oilers in well over two years, since the Oil prevailed 4-3 in overtime on Oct. 24, 2019 in Edmonton.
