POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Caps 4, Preds 1

I Know There's An Answer - For nearly 40 minutes on Tuesday night in Nashville, Joe Snively's goal early in the first period was all the offense the Caps and the Nashville Predators could muster. The Preds poured shots toward the Washington net from the start, and by night's end there were 72 shot attempts on the Caps' net, where Ilya Samsonov was playing his sixth straight game.

Those quiet first 40 minutes gave way to an eventful first five minutes of the third.
Nashville tied the game at 1-1 at 2:43 of the third on a Michael McCarron goal. On the next shift, the Nic Dowd line turned in a terrific shift that culminated in Nick Jensen answering back with the go-ahead goal for the Caps at 3:27. And 66 seconds after that, Caps captain Alex Ovechkin netted his 30th goal of the season on a Washington power play, giving the Caps a 3-1 lead.
That was all the offense Samsonov would require; he finished with 33 saves and his 16th win of the season in a 4-1 Caps victory.
The Caps had good sticks from the start - they got in the way of 17 Nashville shot bids on the night. And the Preds may have been guilty of putting too fine a point on it; they fired high or wide or off the iron on 21 other occasions.
"I liked our game tonight," said Preds coach John Hynes following the game. "I thought we had good energy, we were on our toes. The things we talk about is icing a game that gives us the best chance to win night in and night out, and play consistently.
"Lots of times, we talk about controlling what you can control, and I thought for the most part tonight we did that. When you look at metrics that we feel are important, we controlled territory and offensive zone time. We controlled the shot clock, we controlled shot attempts, hit three or four posts, and we controlled the face-off circle.
"I think when you look at that game, we didn't get the end result we wanted. But I think all of the things that lead to a winning recipe night in and night out and getting more to the identity we want to play with, I thought we were hard, we were committed and we didn't get the end result tonight. But when you look at the areas I've addressed with you, I think that more often than not you're going to win hockey games."
Hynes is right, of course. But this was one of the "not" nights for his team. They may have done more surviving than thriving on Tuesday night, but the Caps took the two points with their first win in Nashville in just over six years, since Feb. 9, 2016.
Tuesday's victory was also the 700th in the regular season coaching career of Caps bench boss Peter Laviolette.
"I think we played really good today," says Samsonov. "It's a team win, for sure. We got a lot of blocks, we played unbelievable. The [penalty kill] did a great job. It's an important game for the team, and for Lavi, too. We did really hard work today and got the win."
The Great Eight Update - Ovechkin ended a season high six-game goal drought with a pair of tallies on Tuesday, reaching the 30-goal plateau for the 16th time in his NHL career with the first of those two goals. Only ex-Caps winger Mike Gartner (17) had more 30-goal seasons in his career.
Among players to begin a season at age 36 or older, Ovechkin tied Teemu Selanne (2006-07 with Anaheim) for the fewest games in NHL history to reach 30 goals in a single campaign.
Ovechkin's two-goal game on Tuesday was the 156th multi-goal game of his NHL career, moving him to within two of Brett Hull (158) for second most in League history. With 761 career goals, Ovechkin is now five goals away from Jaromir Jagr (766) for third place on the NHL's all-time goals ledger.
Powering Up - Washington's much maligned power play came through with a big goal in the third period of Tuesday's game. Just over a minute after Jensen restored the Caps' lead, Ovechkin one-timed a shot past Juuse Saros on the short side to extend that lead to 3-1. As the Caps power play tries to re-establish its dominance, scoring an important goal at an important time of the game might give the unit's overall confidence a lift.
"We're chipping in a goal a game right now," says Laviolette of the power play. "In the last six or seven games, it's right around 30 percent, so the numbers have gone up. It just went through the mud there for a little bit and it just didn't feel good. But it's been contributing in a big way to score goals.
"Tonight was a perfect example, a 2-1 game where you get that power-play goal to go up by two. [Tom] Wilson, [Evgeny Kuznetsov] and [Nicklas Backstrom] did great work out of the corner, bumped it up to Johnny [Carlson] and Johnny had a great look where he just kind of froze everybody and moved it over to [Ovechkin], and [Ovechkin] hammered it, so it was a real big goal.
"I thought at the moment when the game is 2-1 and they were pressing the whole night - they're a shot heavy team. There was just a lot of pucks that were coming at our net, and to go out and get that two-goal cushion I thought was important."
The Caps are now 6-for-22 (27.3 percent) with the extra man in their last seven games.
I Appear Missing -The Caps lost defenseman Justin Schultz to an upper body injury late in the first period of Tuesday's game against the Predators. Schultz retired for the night after seven shifts totaling 4:50 in ice time, and the Caps were down to five blueliners for the remainder of the evening.
"That was really big," says Laviolette of the play of the five remaining defensemen. "Losing Schultzie early like that, I think anytime you drop to five it just becomes a little more taking. Somebody's double-shifting all the time and just getting back out on the ice. They did a lot of work to make sure that we were good defensively, so they did a good job of covering for him."
Nashville outhit the Caps 37-21 in the game, and the five remaining Washington defensemen were on the receiving end of 17 of those hits. Martin Fehervary took five of them, while Carlson and Jensen took four each, and Trevor van Riemsdyk took three.
By The Numbers - Carlson led the Caps with 25:09 in ice time … Connor McMichael led Washington with six shots on net … Ovechkin and Carlson led the Caps with seven shot attempts each … Dowd led the Caps with five hits … Fehervary led the Capitals with three blocked shots … Kuznetsov won seven of 10 draws (70 percent).