In Washington, DC, John Carlson hit for a pair of power-play goals on Wednesday night to lead the Capitals to a 4-3 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Ilya Samsonov made 24 saves in the Capitals win.
“We didn’t have to look too far back to see what happens when we don’t start out well,” Carlson said. “We were behind in a lot of our games in the past. [It’s] something we addressed and wanted to get out to a really good start.”
Washington improved to 38-22-10.
“The power play, it’s been good,” Capitals coach Peter Laviolette said. “It’s been on point for a while, but they moved it well. John Carlson had a massive game. He was noticeable not only in the offensive zone, because that’s where it’s easy to notice him, but he was really good in the defensive zone.”
Nikita Kucherov, Nick Paul and Ross Colton were the Lightning strikers.
“[We] definitely played a good game,” Kuznetsov said. “That was a huge two points for us. We played ‘D’ pretty good sometimes, sometimes not, but at the end of the day we play for each other a lot today, so that was a fun game to watch and play.”
The Lightning are 0-2-1 in their last three.
“It feels like every mistake right now is kind of ending up in the back of our net, so it’s tough not to get frustrated,” the Lightning’s Steven Stamkos said. “We just have to continue to work our way through it. We have a lot of veteran leadership on this team that we know we can work our way out of it.”
Martin Fehervary also scored for the Caps, his goal gave them a 1-0 lead.
The Bolts dropped to 43-20-7.
“We didn’t quit. We fought till the end,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “When it’s not quite going your way, maybe it’s one special team lets you down one game and doesn’t the next but then the other one does, or your 5-on-5 play. That’s part of it, right? It’s the whole game coming together. Right now, we’re just missing in some areas.”
Alex Ovechkin scored his 43rd of the season.
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 24 saves in the Lightning loss.
“We couldn’t get clears, so that first one they spent however long in our zone and eventually buried one,” Cooper said of the penalty kill. “And the second one, one of our ‘D’ took a shot, so he was down and we probably collapsed a little bit too low and clearly Carlson was hot tonight. Everything he was shooting, either he was scoring it or somebody was.”
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