Stars Upend Caps, 3-2

For much of the first 40 minutes of Sunday's game between the Capitals and the Dallas Stars at Capital One Arena, the Caps looked like the tired team that had played on Saturday, and the Stars looked like the team that last played on Friday night and had an off day on Saturday. But the reality was the opposite.

Despite playing - and losing - on Saturday afternoon against the Islanders in New York, the Stars had all the early jump, and they jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first and maintained the advantage for the remainder of the contest in a 3-2 victory over the Caps, who have now dropped nine of their last 10 home games to the Stars (1-6-3).
Sunday's setback halted the Caps' modest four-game winning streak, and also stopped Washington's point streak at eight (7-0-1).
"The first, we're down 2-0 and we're chasing the game," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "It was a good effort at the end, but we can't do that. We needed to be better in the first period, and we weren't."
Dallas broke the seal on the scoresheet early in Sunday's game, taking a 1-0 lead in the third minute of the contest. Marian Studenic carried down the left side deep into Washington ice before dishing back to Esa Lindell at the left point. Lindell put a shot toward the net, and Alexander Radulov deflected it past Vitek Vanecek for a 1-0 Dallas lead at 2:17 of the first.
Even before Radulov's goal, Vanecek had to make an excellent stop on John Klingberg's shot from in tight. Radulov's goal came on the Stars' fifth shot in less than three minutes.
Washington had a pair of power plays in the front half of the first, but it couldn't manage to conjure up an equalizer on either of those opportunities.
With just under three minutes left in the first, the Stars had their first extra-man chance of the game, and they doubled their lead half a minute later.
The puck came out of the zone briefly, and the Stars regrouped in the neutral zone. Jason Robertson issued a quick feed to Roope Hintz, sending him straight down the middle of the Washington zone. From the inside of the right circle, Hintz beat Vanecek with a backhander to the stick side at 17:55 of the first.
Just ahead of the five-minute mark of the second, Washington went on its fourth power play of the night, and this time the Caps cashed in. John Carlson put it on a tee for Alex Ovechkin, and the captain crushed a one-timer from his office past Jake Oettinger at 4:53 of the second, cutting the Dallas lead in half.
But just after the midpoint of the middle frame, the Stars restored their two-goal cushion with Hintz's second power-play goal of this game, this one on a one-timer from just above the paint, off a setup from Joe Pavelski, making it a 3-1 game at 10:38.
Down two goals going into the third, the Caps were in fairly familiar territory. In five of their six previous games, they rallied from a third-period deficit to earn at least a point. Washington displayed much more verve right from the start of the third, spending more time in the Dallas end of the ice and putting some pucks on Oettinger.
The Caps broke through at 8:56 of the third, pulling to within one on Dmitry Orlov's goal from the high slot. Washington had been putting some offensive zone heat on the Stars, and Dallas was able to relieve some pressure by getting the puck out to neutral ice and getting a partial personnel change. But the Caps came right back in the zone, and Tom Wilson left it for Orlov in the middle of the ice. From just above the tops of the circles, Orlov fired a rocket of a wrist shot past Oettinger to make it 3-2.
Vanecek only had to make two saves in the third, but he made a huge one less than a minute after Orlov's goal, flashing his right pad to deny Robertson at the doorstep, and keeping the Caps within one.
With just over six minutes remaining, Oettinger made his best save of the game to keep John Carlson from tying it. Playing without his stick, Oettinger moved laterally to thwart Carlson's one-time bid from the left dot, the Caps' best chance to tie it late.
"I kind of got tied up," recounts Oettinger, "so I just tried to get everything I could over there and thankfully it hit me."
With under half a minute remaining, Stars captain Jamie Benn made a reckless play on Carlson as he went back to get the puck near the Washington net, while Vanecek was pulled for an extra attacker. As the two skaters approached the goal line, Benn gave Carlson a shove that sent him careening dangerously into the back wall at full speed.
Carlson stayed down for a while before heading down the tunnel while the final 20 seconds were played out. Laviolette termed the play "dirty" in his postgame press conference, and Carlson was clearly upset at the lack of a penalty call.
Washington couldn't find its third-period magic in this one, suffering its first regulation loss in the month of March.
"Not our best game," says Caps center Lars Eller. "Not our best game."
A point out of a playoff spot, the Stars believed they played well enough to win on Saturday, and they knew they needed two points on Sunday with the days dwindling and just over a month remaining in the regular season.
"Today we played the whole game pretty well," says Hintz. "We kept going like we played in New York. I think we played a pretty good game there; we just couldn't get the win. We just played how we did there."
"We did carry it over," says Stars coach Rick Bowness. "Three games in three and a half days; I give our guys a lot of credit. We had a great start to the game, a lot of energy early, which we needed to have because as the game went on, we were going to start to slow up a little bit. So I give our guys a lot of credit. They sucked it up and they were ready to go and we got physical, we got into the game."