Samsonov's busiest period was the third, when he stopped all 15 Philadelphia shots sent in his direction.
Two nights after suffering their only misstep on the trip in a lopsided 5-1 loss to the Bruins in Boston, the Caps got back in the win column, a must in this shortened season of four-point games facing divisional foes exclusively. Facing a Philly team that was playing on shorter rest, the Caps got smarter as the game wore on.
"I think maybe when we did get it into their zone or at their blueline," says Carlson, "[we were] trying to make a little bit too fancy of plays or trying to make an extra pass here or there. We knew they were coming off a back-to-back game, and we know how that feels this year with the amount of games that we play. I thought we were letting them off the hook too easy; we were letting them make quick work of our offensive zone time.
"When you've got a team coming off a back-to-back, you've got to make them work for every inch. I think once we stuck to that mindset of getting it in there and working them first before, and letting that open up things for us instead of trying to make great plays right off the bat. I think that gave us more zone time, it gave us a more tired team to play against, and then things that might have been a little open became a little bit more open for us."
Washington is 7-3-2 on the road this season, the second-best road record in the East Division. New Jersey owns the best road mark in the East at 6-2-1, but the Devils are a dismal 2-9-1 on home ice this season.
One of New Jersey's two regulation losses in its nine road games came here in Washington on Feb. 21, a game in which Craig Anderson was the starter and winner in a 4-3 Capitals victory. On the final weekend of February in New Jersey, the Caps swept a pair of games from the Devils to kick off the aforementioned five-game road trip.
In its most recent outing, New Jersey halted a five-game slide (0-5-0) when it eked out a 1-0 victory over the Bruins in Boston on Sunday. Scott Wedgewood made 40 saves to record his second shutout of the season and the fourth of his NHL career, and Kyle Palmieri scored the only goal of the game with 4:37 left in the third.