POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Caps 3, Devils 2

Back In The Saddle Again - On the day the NHL's unrestricted free agent emporium opened for busines less than five months ago, the Caps jumped in and signed Henrik Lundqvist to a one-year pact worth $1.5 million. That was early last October, when Washington was counting on a 2020-21 netminding tandem of sophomore Ilya Samsonov and the future Hockey Hall of Famer.

Fast forward to now, and we're two weeks shy of the midpoint of the season. And through Washington's first 21 games of the abbreviated 56-game slate, Samsonov and Lundqvist have combined for exactly three starts, all of them by Samsonov. Lundqvist stepped away from the Caps and the NHL in late December to undergo heart surgery, and Samsonov landed on the league's "unavailable due to COVID protocol" list in mid-January, days after making his second start and less than a week into the regular season.
That Washington sports a fine 12-5-4 overall record is due largely to rookie goaltender Vitek Vanecek, who stepped from the shadows into the spotlight and started 85 percent of the Caps' first 20 games of the season, giving his team a chance to win each of those games and picking up points in a dozen of them.
Vanecek is tied for the League lead with 17 starts, but that sort of workload isn't going to be sustainable going forward in this season of the condensed and abbreviated schedule. To this point of the season, the Caps have been able to lean on Vanecek this heavily mainly because back-to-backs have been few and far between; the Caps had just three of them over the season's first six weeks. But they've got seven of them coming up in a 55-day span to close out the campaign, so they'll need more than just Vanecek going good for them to maintain playoff positioning in the East Division.
With all that in mind, it was good to see Samsonov shake off a couple of tough goals against in Washington's 3-2 win over the Devils in New Jersey on Sunday afternoon. Seeing NHL action for the first time in exactly six weeks - and after a quartet of up-and-down rehab starts with AHL Hershey, Samsonov improved to 2-0-1 on the season with a 19-save performance against the Devils.
"It was great," says Caps center Nicklas Backstrom. "It was great to see him back there. And it was great to get him a win the first game he is back, too. I think they had some really good chances in the third and he really, really played solid back there. When the season has been a little bit like his so far, it's good with confidence and good with wins. He got that one under the belt, and it's good moving forward. It's all about confidence."
Samsonov whiffed with his glove on a Mikhail Maltsev shot from above the right circle on the second shot he faced in Sunday's game, and a Yegor Sharangovich shot leaked through him in the second. But he had the answer for everything else, including three shots in the game's final three minutes.
It didn't hurt that the Caps played an extremely stingy game in front of him, especially over the final 25 minutes.
"I think for him it was a very important game mentally," says Caps captain Alex Ovechkin. "We tried to do our best blocking shots and playing smart in the [defensive] zone. For a kid who didn't play lots of games to get a start right away and get a win, it's very important and we are all happy for him."
Busy Bodies - With a weekend sweep of the Devils in New Jersey, the Caps concluded a busy stretch in which they played nine games in 15 days to close out February, and they also opened up a five-game road trip on a winning note. The Caps came through that grueling stretch with a 6-2-1 record, and they are 6-1-1 in their last eight.
The four-point weekend in New Jersey was satisfying in that the Caps limited the Devils' offense, holding them without a shot on net for lengthy stretches in each of the weekend's wins. Secondary scoring largely fueled the Washington attack on Saturday while the top six accounted for all the offense on Sunday, and both Vanecek and Samsonov can feel good about their performances.
In short, this was a weekend in which everyone on the team can feel as though they played a big part in picking up the four points.
"There is no message from [Nic] Dowd's line to Ovi's line; it's all the same message and it's all the same mindset," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "It's nice when you get contributions from everybody and all of the lines, and I thought it was really good.
"We had to juggle the lines, too, because of [Evgeny Kuznetsov's absence], right before the game [on Saturday], and guys adapted and adjusted, and I thought T.J. [Oshie] did another great job of filling in at center, and his line scored a goal - [Daniel Sprong] had a tip on a goal - and it's nice when you get contributions from everybody."
In addition to limiting the Devils to just 45 shots on net in 120 minutes of hockey, the Washington blueline corps contributed six assists on Washington's eight goals over the weekend. The Caps have now yielded two or fewer goals against in three straight games for the first time this season and for the first time since they strung together four such games from Nov. 30-Dec. 6, 2019.
"We've been talking about it a lot as a team," says Backstrom. "Obviously, you have to score goals to win hockey games, but everything starts in the defensive zone and how you play as a five-man unit coming out of your own zone. That's what we've been working hard on and really work together and stay close to each other and give the other team nothing. I feel like we want to be a hard team to play against on a daily basis, so that's what we're going to try to do."
Birthday Boy -Caps left wing Jakub Vrana celebrated his 25th birthday on Sunday, and he was the only Washington player to score a goal in each of the team's weekend games in New Jersey.
In scoring on his actual birthday on Sunday, Vrana became the first Capital to net a birthday goal since Matt Niskanen on Dec. 6, 2018 at Arizona. Since 1979, there have been 32 instances of a Capitals player scoring on his birthday.
Game Winner - Ovechkin notched his third game-winning goal of the season in the second period of Sunday's game; only Toronto's Auston Matthews (six) and Edmonton's Leon Draisaitl (four) have more.
For his career, Ovechkin now has 113 career goals, fourth most in NHL history. He trails third-place Phil Esposito by five, and now trails Esposito by only four goals on the all-time goals list. Esposito ranks sixth all-time with 717 goals and Ovechkin notched No. 713 on Sunday.
By The Numbers - John Carlson led the Caps with 27:15 in ice time … Ovechkin led the Caps with six shots on net and 10 shot attempts … Dmitry Orlov led Washington with three hits … Ovechkin and Carlson each had three blocked shots to lead the Capitals … Oshie won eight of 10 face-offs (80 percent), Lars Eller won eight of 12 (67 percent) and Dowd won 13 of 20 (65 percent).