In Washington, DC< the Capitals used three power play goals, including two from T.J. Oshie, to down the New Jersey Devils on Sunday afternoon.
“It was nice. The goals came in different ways,” Oshie said. “We got ourselves into areas to score and the playmakers made the plays. One, [Carlson] on a good shot right to my stick. I barely had to move it. And then [Evgeny Kuznetsov] with a great play off the wall. So it felt good to get back on track.”
Craig Anderson made 22 saves in the win.
“I thought [Anderson] played a really good game,” Capitals head coach Peter Laviolette said. “The first 10 minutes, we were a little bit slow out of the gate and then the next 50 minutes I thought we were pretty good, but he made some big saves in there and he gave us a chance.”
The Devils went out to a 2-0 lead and then surrendered the lead on four straight goals from the Caps.
“I think if you look at it, the difference in the game was special teams,” New Jersey head coach Lindy Ruff said. “We’ve got all the personnel we need. I think there was some good stuff I saw on the power play. We scored a goal. We did some good stuff for periods of time on the penalty killing, but then we had the crucial breakdown which really hurt us.”
Andreas Johnsson, Jack Hughes and Nikita Gusev scored for New Jersey.
“It wasn’t the result we hoped for. Nonetheless, it was a special moment for me and one I’ll never forget,” Travis Zajac said. “The guys and the organization did just a great job really making it a memorable event for me. It’s definitely something I’ll never forget.”
Zajac played in his 1,000th NHL game, all with the Devils.
John Carlson and and Alex Ovechkin added single markers for the Caps.
“I think everybody was feeling good when we scored a power-play goal,” Ovechkin said. “It was huge for us, kind of give us momentum. You can see in the third period, we just play smart and wait on our chance, and when we have [Oshie] on our team, every time he’s hot, he’s hot.”
Aaron Dell made 37 saves in the loss.
“I thought he played a strong game,” Ruff said. “I haven’t really looked at the goals, but I know he made some key saves at key times for us, and there’s a couple of goals he couldn’t do anything about.”
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