A bunch of firsts led the Capitals to their fifth straight win on Wednesday night, a 4-3 overtime triumph over the Buffalo Sabres in front of a loud and engaged crowd at Capital One Arena.
Dylan Strome scored with 3.6 seconds left in overtime to complete a Capitals comeback in the Wednesday win, the first overtime game-winning goal of his NHL career. The Caps dug themselves an early 2-0 hole against the visiting Buffalo Sabres, but they rallied back on the first goals of the season from Alex Alexeyev – his first NHL goal – and T.J. Oshie, and they forced overtime on Tom Wilson’s 6-on-5 tally with 1:15 remaining in regulation.
“John [Carlson] made a good great pass up to me,” says Strome of the game-winner, “and I was kind of thinking pass the whole way, and then the [defenseman] backed up a little bit, and I figured I’d just get a shot off, and Sonny [Milano] did a great job driving the net. It’s a big win, a character win. I feel like we were battling all game.”
“The start was not great,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “We didn’t start on time tonight … We’re just showing the character of the group; they’re not just going to ride off into the sunset and say, ‘It just wasn’t our night; Buffalo came in and took two points from us.’ They’re going to dig in and they’re going to put everything they’ve got to find a way to turn the momentum of the game, and that’s what they did. And I thought we got better as the game went along.”
In each of their first five games of the season, the Caps yielded the first two goals of the contest. They did so once again on Wednesday night against Buffalo.
Sabres’ winger J.J. Peterka started the scoring just after the midpoint of the initial period, scoring on an extended offensive zone shift. From down low on the right side of the ice, Tyson Jost pushed the puck to Peterka near the right point. Peterka then drifted down to the top of the right circle before unleashing a wrist shot through traffic, beating Caps’ netminder Darcy Kuemper for a 1-0 lead at 10:09.
Just under four minutes later, the Sabres doubled their lead on Zach Benson’s first NHL goal, and it was a beauty. Buffalo won the puck in the left wing corner of the ice, and Benson and Victor Olofsson worked a variation of the give-and-go, with Benson getting the puck back from Olofsson and carrying directly toward the net. As he reached the top of the paint, Benson went bar down with a nifty between the legs shot, the first such goal scored in the NHL this season; there were six between the legs shots that resulted in goals last season, and two more in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
“I’m just trying to do the move that is going to work, and I kind of just let my instincts take over,” recounts Benson.
Benson’s goal gave the Sabres a 2-0 lead at 16:04 of the first.
Washington’s fourth line cut the lead in half before the first intermission. Beck Malenstyn did some good wall work in the right wing corner to maintain possession and extend a shift in the Sabres’ end. From the left half wall, Nic Dowd pushed the puck to the left point for Alexeyev, who put a seeing eye wrist shot toward the Buffalo cage. The shot bounded off a Sabres’ defender and just past the right pad of netminder Devon Levi at 17:01 of the first period.
Alexeyev’s first NHL goal wasn’t as pretty as Benson’s but the big blueliner was every bit as excited to light the lamp for the first time, in his 42nd game in the League.
“Unreal,” says Alexeyev of his first NHL lamplighter. “I didn’t really recognize that it went in. But it feels great. It’s a huge weight off my shoulders.”
Just ahead of the midpoint of the second, the Caps pulled even. This time, it was Oshie notching his first goal of the season. From just inside the Buffalo line, Oshie made a nice pass to Connor McMichael on the right side of the ice. McMichael put a shot on net, and Levi made a pad stop. But Oshie was there to backhand the rebound to the back of the net, tying the game at 2-2 at 7:50.
In the back half of the middle frame, the Caps landed in some penalty soup. Nick Jensen was whistled for holding, his first minor penalty of the season. And less than a minute later, McMichael went to the box for hooking Jeff Skinner, a penalty that might have saved a goal.
With a couple of excellent Kuemper saves, Washington managed to kill off the two-man advantage. But Buffalo regained the lead when Dylan Cozens drilled a one-timer home from the left dot in the waning seconds of the McMichael minor. The Cozens goal made it a 3-2 game at 16:18, and it also halted the Caps’ penalty killing streak at 10 games and 23 consecutive kills.
Washington turned up the heat on Buffalo in the final 20 minutes of regulation. The Caps’ offensive zone pressure forced the Sabres into a series of consecutive icings in the middle of the third, but Buffalo escaped unscathed. The Sabres had one more power-play opportunity just after that, and the Caps snuffed that one out, setting the stage for Wilson’s late heroics.
Strome set that one up with a sublime backhand pass; he must have noticed that Wilson was locked and loaded in the bumper position. All he needed was the puck.
“It’s just kind of ready, shoot position there, and Stromer made a good play,” says Wilson. “It’s a big goal to push it into overtime and get the job done.”
For the Sabres, Wednesday’s game was their fourth loss in five games.
“Obviously it’s a disappointment that we didn’t get two points,” says Sabres’ coach Don Granato. “I felt our guys played more of the style of game we want to play.”
Both sides were relatively happy with the way they played, but the Caps got a bit of a boost from the home crowd, which witnessed Washington’s sixth win on home ice in its last eight games (6-1-1).
“I give a lot of credit to our fans tonight,” says Carbery. “You could feel it in the building. When we got that second [goal], and even as we were pressing to try to tie it, way before that, from the 10-minute mark on, you could feel the energy in the building. It felt good about us finding a way to tie that game – whether it was going to be 5-on-5 of 6-on-5 late – which we did.”
