After the Pittsburgh Penguins tied the game 2-2 Thursday night in Washington, DC, the Capitals reeled off three straight goals in the third period to defeat the Pens, 2-2.
Tom Wilson broke the deadlock, and the Pens’ rally at 12:40 of the final frame.
“When a guy loses a stick it’s another advantage in our favor,” Wilson said. “We were able to execute and it was in the back of the net. That’s a fortunate break for us, but at the end of the day we’ve still got to put it in, and the power play did a good job to do that.”
Carl Hagelin and Lars Eller scored empty-net goals in the final 82 seconds of the game.
Vitek Vanecek made 26 saves in the win.
Washington improved to 10-5-4.
“We walked away with a point [Tuesday] but tonight … more reflects what we want to see and what we are trying to get to,” Capitals head coach Peter Laviolette said. “So it was nice to follow up [Tuesday] with a win. I think we did things the right way and we got rewarded for it.”
Brandon Tanev and Jake Guentzel had rallied the Pens back from a 0-2 deficit.
“I loved our resilience,” Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan said. “There was a lot of fight in getting back in the game. We come back and get those two goals and I thought we had pretty good momentum. So it was unfortunate that we didn’t find a way to at least get a point out of this, but that’s hockey.”
Nicklas Backstrom scored for the Caps, and T.J. Oshie posted the Caps’ 2-0 lead with an acrobatic strike.
“I mean what an individual effort to make that happen,” Laviolette said. “He’s been good. I think that he’s been a consistent player for us the entire year, and it is nice to see him get rewarded. To me that was a lot of individual effort and a really nice play to finish it off.”
The Pens dropped to 10-7-1.
“I saw I had some speed carrying the puck up the ice,” Tanev said of his goal, “and I think Teddy [Blueger] did a great job in pushing the defenseman back and creating some more space for me, and I was fortunate to put a puck on net and the end result was a goal.”
Tristan Jarry made 30 saves in the loss.
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