In Washington, DC, the Capitals’ Vitek Vanecek made 24 saves in a 6-1 thrashing of the visiting Pittsburgh Penguins on Sunday evening.
Six different skaters hit for goals for the Caps including Martin Fehervary who staked them to a 1-0 lead in the first period.
Sidney Crosby played in his second game of the season, coming back from NHL COVID19 protocol.
“It’s his second game in five months, six months. So I think we have to understand where he’s at and he’s coming off a difficult 10 days that he just went through,” Pens head coach Mike Sullivan said. “I thought he played hard tonight under real challenging circumstances, but there’s no doubt in my mind he’ll get better and better as each day goes by here and each game he plays.”
Jake Guentzel scored the Pens lone goal after the Caps had taken a 2-0 lead in the first period.
“You never want to lose back-to-back like that, in that fashion,” Guentzel said. “It definitely doesn’t feel good, but it’s nice when you get some guys back and hopefully we can move on from these two. … We’ve got to stop the bleeding here.”
Garnet Hathaway had scored ahead of Guentzel for the two-goal lead.
“Guys are working hard, pushing, pushing to create. It’s nice to see guys getting rewarded with offense,” Capitals chead oach Peter Laviolette said. “You can’t count on one line the entire year so other guys chipping in … that secondary scoring helps move the needle in the right direction for us.”
Pittsburgh dropped to 5-5-4.
Daniel Sprong and Conor Sheary built the lead out to 4-1 in the middle frame.
“Obviously this game got away from us there,” the Pens’ Brian Dumoulin,said. “They scored a couple quick goals there in the second period. I thought even though they scored two early, we were coming. We just got to be better for a full 60.”
Washington improved to 8-2-4 with the win.
Evgeny Kuznetsov and Tom Wilson (power play) scored in the third period to erase any doubt of the outcomes.
Tristan Jarry made 26 saves in the Pens loss.
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