Making his NHL debut, the 25-year-old Vanecek set aside 30 of the 31 shots he faced to help Washington steal a couple of points. Vanecek's good friend - and fellow 2014 draftee - Jakub Vrana scored the first goal of the game off a fine feed from Tom Wilson early in the second period, and Wilson himself supplied the game-winner midway through the third.
With the two victories at season's outset, Caps coach Peter Laviolette is the first Washington bench boss to win each of his first two games with the team since Bruce Boudreau did so in November of 2007. Only Ron Wilson (4-0 to start in 1997-98) and Bruce Cassidy (3-0 in 2002-03) have had longer winning streaks to start their respective Capitals coaching tenures.
"We've changed a lot of things, and there has definitely been that buy-in," says Tom Wilson. "[Thursday] was a great team effort; [Friday night] was a little slow to start, but I think we got there in the third [period]. We're just going to keep building on it because it's a new system and you just trust the guy next to you to go out there and get it done."
While Vanecek turned in a stellar performance in his debut, he had help from a stalwart group of Washington penalty killers. Buffalo had five power plays in Friday's game while Washington had none, and the Sabres spent 10 of the game's 60 minutes enjoying a manpower advantage. But the Caps' penalty-killing outfit limited Buffalo to just six shots on net on the power play during that span.
"It wasn't pretty tonight, but it's really important for us to be able to win games like 2-1 and 1-0 and the offense isn't clicking," says Caps center Lars Eller. "We had to kill five penalties tonight, and it's huge when we can win that way, and completely shut down a pretty good first [power-play] formation on the other side; they've got a lot of talent. I think it's pretty important for us to know we can win games that way when we're not scoring four or six goals like we were [Thursday].
"That's a positive on a night when we really aren't playing our best with the puck. But we were able to shut down without the puck, and that's a crucial thing especially come playoff time, too."
While Washington is out to a perfect 2-0-0 start to the young season, the Pens come into Sunday's tilt with an 0-2-0 log after dropping a pair of games to the Flyers in Philadelphia. The Pens fell 6-3 in Wednesday's season opener and dropped a 5-2 decision on Friday in the rematch.
Pittsburgh has held a scoreboard lead for just under 10 minutes of the 120 minutes of hockey it has played in the first two games thus far. None of the league's 31 teams has permitted more goals than the 11 the Penguins have allowed through two games.
Small sample size warnings abound at this early juncture of the campaign. The Penguins are still loaded with talented players, but as is the case with the Capitals, Pittsburgh's best players - Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang - are all now on the far side of 30 years of age.
Pens general manager Jim Rutherford is always one of the league's more assertive GMs, and he has been adept at swinging deals to bring in complementary players to surround the aforementioned trio. The Pens are annually in the hunt for the playoffs and more, and this season should be no exception. Pittsburgh hasn't missed the playoffs since 2005-06, which was Crosby's rookie season.
In Sunday's matinee match, the Caps will be going up against former Washington coach Todd Reirden, who served six seasons in D.C. and was an associate coach with the 2017-18 Stanley Cup champion Capitals. Reirden was Washington's bench boss in each of the last two seasons, leading the Caps to Metropolitan Division titles in both seasons, only to suffer first-round playoff exits both seasons.
Before he came to Washington at the outset of the 2014-15 season, Reirden was an assistant coach for several seasons with the Pens.
