Schultz's Late Goal Wins it for Caps

As great as the game of hockey is, it's not always fair. Teams that work the hardest or play the best don't always win on a given night. Results aren't always commensurate with effort. Games can be stolen. But on Tuesday night at Capital One Arena, the Caps deserved to win a hockey game over the New York Islanders, and they not only won it, they won it in the last 30 seconds of regulation.

With just over half a minute left in regulation in a 2-2 game, Caps defenseman Justin Schultz took a feed from Brenden Dillon in his own end and began heading up ice. In the neutral zone, he worked a little give-and-go play with Garnet Hathaway, taking the return feed just as he reached the top of the right circle in New York ice. From the right dot, Schultz fired a shot that beat Isles netminder Semyon Varlamov on the blocker side, giving the Caps a 3-2 lead with just 26.4 seconds left in the game.
"Dilly just did a great job from behind the net with great patience," recounts Schultz, of his second goal in as many games. "That allowed me to get open for him, and then Hath did a great job along the wall and found me. I was lucky enough for it to go in."

On night in which it played without five key regulars and lost its top to centers to injury - one of them on a greasy third period hit from Isles irritant Leo Komarov - the undermanned Washington squad prevailed. Just as important as getting the two points was leaving the Isles with none, and mercifully avoiding a fifth straight foray into overtime, which would have been a franchise record.
"I thought the guys played really hard tonight," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "Obviously New York has got a good team. We knew we had to compete hard, we knew we had to check hard, we knew we had to get battle ready to play a team like that.
"I thought the guys that the guys that were in the lineup did a terrific job, and the newcomers that came in I thought were terrific; [Mike] Sgarbossa played a great game, [Daniel] Carr played a great game, [Daniel Sprong] had a big goal. I thought that was a real positive for guys to jump in the lineup like that and contribute the way they did."

Playing with a decidedly shorthanded lineup and with some new faces for the third straight game, the Caps came out with a great deal of verve in the first. They played quick and spent a good deal of time in the New York end of the ice. Better still, they maintained that jump throughout most of the 60 minutes.
The offensive-zone time paid off when Sprong drew a tripping call on Matt Martin at 10:12 of the opening period, giving the Caps the first man advantage of the evening. Just under a minute later, Washington grabbed the lead.
From center point, Justin Schultz took a Nicklas Backstrom feed and put a shot on net. Varlamov made the stop but lost track of the rebound. John Carlson found it first and buried it, giving the Caps a 1-0 lead at 11:06 of the first.
New York struck back before the end of the first, drawing even when a Noah Dobson right point shot glanced off Dillon's toe cap and went in at 15:33 to make it a 1-1 game.
Early in the second, Backstrom caught a puck up high and immediately went off for repairs. He returned and skated half a dozen shifts in both the second and third periods, but wasn't on the bench at game's end, and didn't play in the final 4:22 of the contest.
Midway through the second period, New York's Mathew Barzal gave the Isles their only lead of the night. Zdeno Chara's pass from behind the Washington net went straight Barzal's tape, and the Isles pivot put a backhander behind Vitek Vanecek at 10:01 to make it a 2-1 game.
Washington has yet to trail at the end of any period this season, and Sprong's first goal as a Capital came off the rush late in the second, keeping that streak alive. Playing his first game as a Capital, Carr gained the New York line on the left side and fed Sprong on the middle of the ice. From the high slot and out of a cluster of players from both sides, Sprong let it rip, beating Varlamov high to the blocker side with 2:39 left in the frame.

At 10:59 of the third, Komarov hammered Eller into the half wall in Washington's end of the ice, and officials called a boarding major as the Caps center struggled to his feet and left the ice for the remainder of the night. The mandatory video review confirmed what most saw with the naked eye; it was a legitimate five-minute major.
But Washington's power-play unit was bereft of most of its main weapons, and it generated only one shot - from Backstrom - from the outside during the all-you-can-eat power play. New York cleared that rebound and killed off the Komarov major without incident.
Typically, teams that kill off a five-minute major penalty can derive some momentum from completing the task. Despite being without both Backstrom and Eller at this point, the Caps made sure it didn't happen, setting the stage for Schultz's late heroics.
"We did a great job of killing it off," says Isles coach Barry Trotz. "Usually when you kill it off your bench has got some momentum. We felt like we were going to get a point and not lose a point, and hopefully get it in the last shift or two or get it in overtime. It energized our bench, and then we backed off, and they came down and scored a goal late."
"Obviously on the five-minute penalty, the power play there didn't go our way," says Schultz. "But the guys did a great job of just sticking with it and not letting them get some momentum."

The icing on the cake for Washington was seeing a trailing Komarov trying in vain to get his stick on Schultz as the blueliner cut loose on his game-winning shot.
Some nights, both teams get what they deserve.
"It's a big win," says Caps right wing T.J. Oshie. "We've got some guys filling in, and actually some of the guys filling in tonight were some of our best players. Maybe they didn't play the biggest minutes, but they made a big difference when they were on the ice. When you lose guys like that, sometimes it can break you and sometimes it can bring you closer together.
"You look at the names of the guys who didn't finish the game tonight and the guys who were out - some pretty big names. But the boys pulled together and found a way to get the W."