Caps Squeak Past Sabres in Shootout, 3-2

Martin Fehervary had a tough 24 hours and T.J. Oshie had a rugged night on Saturday, but both players were able to put their ailments behind them and help the Caps to a 3-2 shootout victory over the Sabres in Buffalo on Saturday night at KeyBank Center.

In a Friday night home game against Pittsburgh, Fehervary took a high hit from Pens forward Brock McGinn midway through the second period. The rookie defenseman left the game and didn't return, and his availability for Saturday's game in Buffalo was in question right up to warm-ups.
Oshie went barreling into the Buffalo net in the first period, took a hard hit from Robert Hagg while beating out an icing call in the second and then got carved in the face by a Kyle Okposo high stick late in the second period.
Down 2-1 heading into the third period, the Caps got a tying goal from Fehervary early in the third and then Oshie won it for Washington in the shootout. Fehervary played just under 20 minutes on the night while Oshie logged a single-game season high of 22:21.
With the comeback victory, the Caps are now 8-1-1 in games immediately following a loss this season.
"The third period was clearly our best period," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "We were on the attack and played a much more competitive game, just a lot more life.
"I actually thought we started the game okay; the first eight minutes or nine minutes were pretty good, so I thought it would continue that way. But we shot ourselves in the foot a little bit, just turning the puck over, some things that we've got to clean up a little bit. But a really good response in the third period, to push it to overtime and then the shootout."
The Caps got an early jump on the Sabres on the scoreboard, taking a 1-0 lead on Lars Eller's second goal in as many nights at 3:40 of the first frame. The goal started with good defensive work in the Washington end, as Fehervary blocked a Hagg shot, and John Carlson cleared the puck from the slot, finding Oshie on the half-wall. From there, Oshie sent Conor Sheary up ice on the right side on a 3-on-1 rush. Sheary squared himself and fed Eller with a perfect cross-ice feed, and Eller deposited it to give the Caps an early advantage.

Washington's start was good, but as the period wore on, Buffalo began to tilt the ice. And a few minutes past the midpoint of the period, the Sabres struck on a breakaway to square the score. Back in the Buffalo lineup after a three-game absence because of injury, Hagg spotted Vinnie Hinostroza behind the Washington defense and sprung him up ice. Hinostroza did the rest, beating Vitek Vanecek high to the glove side at 13:48 to make it a 1-1 game.
Vanecek made an excellent save on Okposo on a 2-on-0 after the Caps turned it over deep in their end.
Buffalo got the best of the Caps in the middle period, taking a 2-1 lead in the process.
Washington had too many extended shifts in its own end of the ice, keeping the Caps from getting much of anything started at the opposite end of the rink. The Caps began to turn that tide somewhat in the latter stages of the period, drawing the game's first power play with 5:47 left in the second and then getting a four-minute power play when Okposo's stick caught Oshie up high with just under two minutes left in the second.
Although the Caps couldn't muster the equalizer on that power play, they used it as a springboard for momentum through much of the third period. Washington got the game tied up on an offensive zone shift early in the third.
Fehervary made a good pass to set up an Alex Ovechkin shot from the right circle, but the Caps captain missed the mark with his shot. Seconds later, Ovechkin took the puck from Evgeny Kuznetsov and put it on a tee for Fehervary, who cranked a shot past Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, who was starting his second game in as many nights for the Sabres.

"I think we had a really good third period," says Fehervary. "We had a lot of opportunities in the offensive zone. This one, I see [Ovechkin] get the puck, and he has the time, and I see that I can get that lane and shoot the puck. He fed me really nice, and I just shoot it."
The Caps kept the heat on Luukkonen throughout the third, and the Finnish netminder made some stellar stops, most notably when he robbed Sheary's resourceful backhand bid with his back to the net, just off the left post.
Vanecek kept the Caps' hopes alive with a strong save on Rasmus Dahlin in a 1-on-1 situation in overtime, and Luukkonen denied Ovechkin's backhand try from the slot. Washington was able to navigate its way through a Buffalo power play of 23.6 seconds in duration at the end of overtime.
Just over a week after they lost a shootout to Chicago in which Kuznetsov and Daniel Sprong hit opposite posts behind Marc-Andre Fleury, the Caps ended up on the other side of the goalpost fortunes in Buffalo. Tage Thompson rang the right pipe and Dylan Cozens clanged the left post on Buffalo's first two tries, while Sprong scored on the Caps' first try to stake them to a lead.
Victor Olofsson scored to square it, and then Oshie methodically skated in and fired it five-hole from between the hash marks, sending the Caps home with two points.

"Sometimes these back-to-backs are tough, especially on the road," says Sheary. "They definitely took it to us in the second period and took the lead. We had the mindset in the third that we just had to put it all out there and see what happens. I think we dominated the third and we were able to take it in the shootout. Overall, a good two points."