Caps Stymie Sabres, 5-3

Any hockey game that features Alex Ovechkin offers the chance to witness history in the making, and the folks at Capital One Arena for Monday's game between the Caps and Buffalo Sabres got a dose of exactly that. The Great Eight scored his 11th goal of the season to tie the legendary Brett Hull (741) on the all-time goals list, and the fans in attendance nearly saw Ovechkin pass Hull, too.

Fans also watched the Caps put together a strong team game in which they held the lead for the better part of 58 minutes, claiming a 5-3 victory and halting a three-game slide (0-2-1).

"I thought we were on point at the start, certainly the first period," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette." There were parts of the second period and third period where [the Sabres] were pressing again, too. Anytime we got in trouble tonight it was almost self-induced; we slowed the game down or turned the puck over and that was it. Turnovers in any sport will kill you.
"We were better in the first, and then it got away from us a little bit and that cost us at times. But overall much better effort with intensity and battle level"
From the very outset of the game, it was clear that Ovechkin and linemates Evgeny Kuznetsov and Tom Wilson were a hungry and motivated trio. The Kuznetsov line started for Washington, and from the first shift of the night the unit was dominant. Kuznetsov and Wilson just missed connecting on a 2-on-1 scoring chance on that first shift, and on their second shift of the game, they lit the lamp.
From the right point, Trevor van Riemsdyk put a shot on net with some air underneath it. The Caps had traffic in front, and Ovechkin caught a piece of it en route to the net, but it also deflected off Wilson before going in. The double-deflection tally came at 2:13 of the first, giving the Caps a 1-0 lead.
Wilson catching a piece of that shot is ultimately what prevented Ovechkin from passing Hull on this night. Had the puck not hit Wilson, Ovechkin might have tied Hull in the first and passed him in the second period. Wilson joked about the sequence briefly after the game.
"If it wasn't for me, he would have passed Hull," cracks Wilson. "I should have just got out of the way and we'd be talking about [Jaromir] Jagr."
Once Ovechkin is clear of Hull, he will set his sights on Jagr, who sits in third place with 766 career goals.
Early in the second, the Caps doubled their lead, but it came at a cost. Center Nic Dowd, who has been dealing with a nagging lower body ailment for a couple weeks now, lost his footing near the Washington bench and lunged his way off while his linemates were at work in the offensive zone. Connor McMichael hopped over the boards to replace him, took a feed from Justin Schultz and put it behind Buffalo goalie Dustin Tokarski to make it a 2-0 game at 2:30 of the second.

Dowd did not return, and he is day-to-day with that lower body injury.
Just over a minute later, Buffalo cut the Caps' cushion in half. Ovechkin lost both his footing and the puck high in the Washington zone, and ex-Cap Cody Eakin quickly collected it and fired it past Vitek Vanecek on the short side at 3:43.
Ovechkin pulled even with Hull at 8:55 of the second when he caught a piece of Dmitry Orlov's center point drive and deflected it past Tokarski to make it a 3-1 game. That goal enabled the Caps to carry a two-goal lead into the third.
That two-goal cushion came in handy when the plucky Sabres again closed to within a goal on an Anders Bjork goalmouth scramble tally at 3:17 of the third.
Following the first television timeout of the third, the Caps again restored that two-goal cushion with some vintage Kuznetsov brilliance. First, he and Wilson were involved in a lengthy scrum for the puck in the right-wing corner, battling tenaciously only to have the Sabres come away with it and start their breakout. But Kuznetsov caught Kyle Okposo from behind and picked his pocket high in Buffalo ice. He quickly found and fed Wilson down low, and Wilson tucked it through Tokarski's five-hole at 6:45.
A late Buffalo penalty gave Washington some power play time in the final minutes, and John Carlson made it a 5-2 contest with a well-placed wrist shot through traffic at 17:47.
But the Sabres weren't done, either. They won an offensive zone draw late in the third, and Colin Miller cranked a center point blast past Vanecek to account for the 5-3 final at 18:56.
"It took us a little bit to get to our game, but I think our intent was strong enough to push through," says Sabres coach Don Granato. "we could have been overwhelmed after that [first] period, but our confidence didn't break and we were able to do a little bit more in the second two periods."
It was the Kuznetsov line that set the tone right off the opening puck drop. They scored three times at 5-on-5; the first one was the game's first goal and each of the next two restored a two-goal lead after the Sabres had tightened the score.

"I think we've been good," says Wilson of his line, "but the last maybe a couple of games we wanted to be better. I think we needed to really step up for the team tonight and lead by example and drive the bus a little bit.
"When [Ovechkin] and Kuzy are playing like they are, I just try to get them the puck, and it's been working pretty well. It was nice to get a good team win. I thought it was a good a good battle from everybody and a great team effort."