POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Caps 4, Sabres 3 (SO)

Opening Night - It'll never be the same until the fans are back in the barn, but the Caps played their first home game in 324 days on Friday night, hosting the Buffalo Sabres in Washington's home opener for the 2020-21 season. Not only were the fans missing from the scene, so too was a quartet of key Caps who were quarantining at home after being placed on the NHL's "Players Unavailable Due to Covid Protocol" list.

Playing in an empty building without captain Alex Ovechkin, center Evgeny Kuznetsov, defenseman Dmitry Orlov and goaltender Ilya Samsonov, the Caps overcame the Sabres 4-3 in a shootout, marking their fifth straight game with a point (3-0-2) to start the season. The Caps' depth showed well, as blueliner Jonas Siegenthaler and goaltender Vitek Vanecek helped smooth over the absences of Orlov and Samsonov, respectively.
Seeing his first action of the regular season, Siegenthaler stepped seamlessly into the top four and logged 20:13 of ice time on the night, third among Washington blueliners. It's the most ice time he has skated since he was on the clock for 22:06 in a Dec. 28, 2019 game against the Hurricanes in Carolina.
Washington's remaining core players also showed well and helped key the victory. Nicklas Backstrom and Jakub Vrana each netted his third goal of the season to support Vanecek's 24-save efforts in net, and John Carlson supplied the game-winner in the shootout.

"The biggest thing right now is those two points," says Caps right wing Garnet Hathaway. "Obviously we wish we had those guys. It's the kind of situation that this season will bring; things like that can happen.
"It's a testament to the guys in this room. There is a lot of belief in this room that we're a deep team that can do a lot of great things. It's one of those games where you can't take a night off, especially when you're missing those four guys. You really have to play at your best to be able to get points."
Rebound - Making his second start in as many games on Friday, Vanecek rebounded from Tuesday's 5-4 loss to the Pens in Pittsburgh, a game in which his rebound control was lacking. Pittsburgh scored a pair of goals on rebound put-backs in that game, including Sidney Crosby's overtime game-winner.
In Friday's victory, Vanecek still had occasional issues with pucks not sticking to him, but he was more adept at redirecting pucks away from harm, often punching them aside with his blocker.

"In Pittsburgh, they were a little bit getting out of me, the rebounds," says Vanecek. "But I was practicing with [goaltending coach] Scotty [Murray] on that in the practices, and I knew that I didn't catch too many rebounds in Pittsburgh. But I was feeling pretty good in Pittsburgh. That was probably just a bad day of rebounds. But I practiced with Scotty, and today was a lot better."
Check, Please - Buffalo's top forward trio of Taylor Hall, Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhart is a handful to play against, and Caps coach Peter Laviolette opted to deploy Nic Dowd and linemates Hathaway and Carl Hagelin against the Sabres' best line on Friday. Although the Eichel unit had the better of the possession battle, putting six shots on net and missing the mark on nine other bids, the Caps' checking group did their job in keeping Eichel and company off the scoresheet and Dowd potted a goal of his own, his second of the season early in the second period.
Last season, Dowd and Hathaway each averaged just under 11 minutes per night while Hagelin was at 14:19 per night, often skating on the third line. In Friday's win over the Sabres, Hagelin skated 19:52 while Dowd skated 19:10 and Hathaway logged 16:19.
Friday night's ice time total was a single-game career best for Dowd's 256-game NHL career to date, and Hathaway's figure was his highest in 71 regular season games since joining the Capitals.
"Guys that play 10 or 11 minutes don't want to play 10 of 11 minutes, they want to play 20," says Laviolette. "Sometimes there is just not enough minutes to go around. But based on the challenge of having guys out, they get elevated up and they take down the responsibility.
"I thought they did a terrific job. That's a tall order with that line, and I thought they competed hard and did a great job."
Subpar Seconds -We're just five games into a new season, so sample sizes are small. But the Caps were outplayed in the second period of Friday's game against the Sabres, particularly in the second half of the frame. And that continues a troubling trend that has vexed the Caps in each of their last four games.
On the season, the Caps have yielded 16 goals against with half of them coming in the middle period. Washington has been outscored 8-7 in the second period, it has been outshot by a combined 59-36 and it has generated just 38.7% (46 of 119) of the total shot attempts in the second period of its games this season.
Given those shot and shot attempt figures, the Caps are fortunate that they've not been outscored by a wider margin in the middle 20 thus far, but it's clearly not sustainable and Laviolette is aware of it.

"We just get away from our game for just a second," says Laviolette of his team's second-period struggles. "The neutral zone is probably the deadliest zone on the ice, and when you're going one way and you turn it over, or you don't put it behind them or you make the wrong decision, you're immediately going to go back and play defense. It's all about doing a better job with that.
"I thought we did that in the third period. Whether we stayed in the offensive zone or not; you don't even have to be generating. But you're not chasing down things coming back the other way. I thought those decisions that we made in the third period were much better and they led to a better game for us."
It Hurts Me Too -Caps right wing Tom Wilson retired for the night after taking two brief shifts in the third period. Wilson departed the game with a lower body injury and is listed as day-to-day. In the first period of Friday's game, he picked up a primary assist on Backstrom's third goal of the season, Wilson's fourth straight game with a point (three goals, three assists).
Climbing The Ladder -With a secondary assist on Dowd's second-period goal, Caps defenseman John Carlson notched the 376th assist of his NHL career, moving past Dale Hunter into fifth place on the franchise's all-time assists list. Carlson is now 16 helpers behind Mike Gartner (392) for fourth place on that list.
The Point Of It -Caps defenseman Zdeno Chara recorded his first point in a Washington sweater on Friday, assisting on Jakub Vrana's second-period goal. In doing so, the 43-year-old Chara became the oldest player ever to record a point for Washington.
Chara is just the second 40-something player ever to put his name on the scoresheet for the Caps, and the first in more than four and a half decades. Way back in Washington's inaugural season of 1974-75, the late Doug Mohns - the first captain in franchise history - was the first 40-something player to record a point for the Caps. Mohns had two goals and 21 points in the final season of his distinguished 22-year NHL career, doing so at the age of 41.
Lack Russian - With Washington's entire Russian contingent unavailable for Friday's home opener against Buffalo, the game marked the first time in more than seven years that the Caps didn't have at least one Russian player in their lineup. The last previous occurrence was on Nov. 2, 2013 against Florida when Ovechkin missed a second straight game because of an upper body injury. Orlov was playing in Hershey and Kuznetsov in the KHL at the time.
Century City - Caps winger Daniel Sprong skated in the 100th game of his NHL career on Friday against Buffalo. Sprong, a 23-year-old native of Amsterdam, Netherlands, was Pittsburgh's second-round choice (46th overall) in the 2015 NHL Draft. He debuted with the Pens as an 18-year-old on Oct. 8, 2015 against the Stars in Dallas, skating 8:59 on the night.
Sprong played the first 42 games of his NHL career with Pittsburgh, the next 55 with Anaheim and each of the last three with Washington. He has totaled 19 goals and 31 points in his first hundred NHL contests.
By The Numbers - For the third time in franchise history and the first time since 2014-15 when they also started 3-0-2, the Caps have pulled at least a point from each of the first five games of the season. Their best start was 7-0-0 in 2011-12 … Carlson led the Caps with 28:37 in ice time, his highest single-game total of the season to date … Carlson also led the Caps with six shots on net and eight shot attempts … Hathaway led the Caps with five hits … Carlson, Backstrom, Siegenthaler and Justin Schultz each blocked two shots to lead the Capitals … Playing in his first NHL regular season game, Brian Pinho won five of eight draws (63%) and was the only Caps center above the break-even mark on the night … For the fifth time in as many games this season the Caps were tasked with more penalty-killing missions (two) than power play opportunities (one). Washington's lone power play of Friday's game came with 9.2 seconds left in regulation.