Caps reassert themselves down Devils in OT

In Washington, DC,  Yegor Sharangovich, Miles Wood, and Damon Severson  erased a three-goal deficit the New Jersey Devils faced on Tuesday night, and forced extra time against the Capitals.

“We just stopped playing. We went out in the third period and didn’t play with the same zip that we needed to, that we played with for two periods,” Capitals head coach Peter Laviolette said. “It was just a lot of errors, to be honest with you, from mishandling pucks to not executing with pucks to penalties to line changes. It was just a bunch of things.”

 

The Caps survived the threat when Jakub Vrana potted his second goal of the game for a 5-4 win after extra time.

“Just jumped on the ice, took advantage of the [defenseman], he was kind of standing still there on the blue line,” Vrana said. “‘Kuz’ made a great pass right on my tape, so I could outskate the D and score.”

Vitek Vanecek made 27 saves in the win.

Janne Kuokkanen also scored for New Jersey.

“I loved their fight. One heck of a point,” Devils head coach Lindy Ruff said. “If you look at the chances in the third period, even though we made it 4-4, I think [Dmitry] Kulikov hit the post, and we had another great opportunity. We controlled the puck through overtime and just turned it over there, and in 3-on-3 that happens.”

T.J. Oshie, Daniel Sprong, and Dmitry Orlov had single strikes for the Caps.

“I looked him off in the morning skate and he wasn’t too happy,” Sprong said. “Two-on-1, the [defenseman] played [Ovechkin], and their goalie decided to take away his side too, so I just had to hit the middle of the net, and that’s what happened. When you go down on a 2-on-1 with the greatest goal-scorer, I think everyone thinks that you’re going to give it to him, and even the goalie thought so.”

The Devils dropped to 8-11-.

“We weren’t giving up breakaways, we weren’t giving up 2-on-1s,” Ruff said of the second period. “But we made some poor puck decisions which cost us and that was probably the difference.”

Scott Wedgewood made 25 saves. in the loss.

“We came out and played aggressive in the third, made some plays, used our speed,” the Devils’ Travis Zajac said. “Probably the way we should’ve played in the second. It was a really good effort still by us to come back in the third. It showed a lot about this group to be able to do that against a team like that.”