Capitals defeat Bruins in round-robin, earn No. 3 seed in East

T.J. Oshie scored for the Washington Capitals, who earned the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference with a 2-1 win against the Boston Bruins in the final game of the Stanley Cup Qualifiers round-robin at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on Sunday.

The Capitals (1-1-1) will play the No. 6 New York Islanders in the best-of-7 Eastern Conference First Round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in Toronto, the Eastern hub city.

New York coach Barry Trotz coached Washington to the 2018 Stanley Cup championship.

"Obviously it's been a couple years now, so it's died down a little bit, but the importance of knowing some of the tendencies, some of the things that I have seen Barry Trotz's teams do and his coaching style and stuff is stuff that I pay close attention to for a few years," said Capitals coach Todd Reirden, who was an assistant under Trotz. "It's something that'll be obviously a great matchup for the Washington Capitals and New York Islanders. It's not Barry Trotz vs. Todd Reirden or any of those type of things."

WATCH: [All Bruins vs. Capitals highlights]

The Bruins (0-3-0) will be the No. 4 seed and play the No. 5 Carolina Hurricanes in the first round. Boston won the Presidents' Trophy as the NHL's top team and was the only team during the regular season to have a points percentage above .700 (.714), but they scored four goals in the round-robin. The top four seeds for the playoffs in each conference were determined by a round-robin in the Qualifiers.

Boston's top line of Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak combined for one assist (Bergeron) and was minus-7.

"You look at our top line, they've been held off the score sheet," Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said. "And I believe that it's going to be a tough task for Carolina to do that on a consistent basis. I think that those guys will be able to get their game going, but we're going to need that primary scoring for one."

Tom Wilson scored for Washington, and Braden Holtby made 30 saves to earn his 49th postseason win and tie Glenn Hall for 21st in NHL history. He's fifth among active NHL goalies (Marc-Andre Fleury, 79; Henrik Lundqvist, 61; Corey Crawford, 51; Tuukka Rask, 50).

"Yeah feel pretty comfortable right now," Holtby said. "Put a lot of work in the last couple months and had to fix a few things and work on a few things over the break to strengthen up, and every game we played here you get a little more stamina and more and more comfortable, and I think the whole group is pretty comfortable going into round one now."

The Capitals hope John Carlson will be ready for Game 1 against the Islanders after the defenseman missed his third straight game. The Norris Trophy finalist hasn't played since leaving in the third period of an exhibition game against the Hurricanes on July 29.

"He continues to skate and make some progress, so I'm hopeful on that, that he'll be able to join us," Reirden said.

Jake DeBrusk scored for Boston, and Rask made 23 saves.

"I think these first round-robin games or whatever they were, you just try to shake the rust off and get your team game in a place you want it to be," Rask said. "I think we kind of improved over these three games. We worked very hard for our goals, just didn't get rewarded, but I think that's going to come, you find a way. It doesn't matter what seed you are. You have to beat every team anyways if you want to advance. I think we feel good. It's over now and we start real hockey."

Oshie gave the Capitals a 1-0 lead with 16 seconds remaining in the first period. Nicklas Backstrom's shot from the left slot was saved by Rask. Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara tried skating the rebound behind the net, but Oshie smacked his stick and the puck rolled into the net.

Wilson made it 2-0 at 2:49 of the third period when he won a race to a puck flipped into the Bruins zone by Ilya Kovalchuk, switched it from his backhand to his forehand and beat Rask over his glove.

DeBrusk scored at 10:30 of the third to get the Bruins within 2-1. Boston was 0-for-2 on the power play and 0-for-9 in the round-robin.

"We pushed back, certainly," Cassidy said. "We stayed in the game, clearly generated more offense tonight than we have in other games more consistently. Didn't finish well around the net a lot 5-on-5. Our power play is still work in progress.

"Obviously the two goals we gave up, again, correctable. One we had on our stick and got a little surprised there and the other one, I don't know. Could [Rask] have come out and played it? Only he can decide that, but at the end of the day we were just a little late on the pinch."

NHL.com staff writers Tom Gulitti and Amalie Benjamin contributed to this story.