The three-game sweep of the NHL from Tuesday night starts in Washington, DC where the Capitals thought they had a win over the Edmonton Oilers sewn up late in the third period.
But Teddy Purcell and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored in the latter stages of the third to force overtime and eventually the skills competition where the Oilers claimed their 
second straight win, the first time they have done since November.
“We can definitely take some positives out of this,” Oilers coach Todd Nelson said. “It was a good character win. The guys stuck with it, but there are also things we still have to work on. Our power play has to be better than it was tonight (1-for-6). We had plenty of opportunities to get back in the game. All in all I think there’s a lot of room for improvement, but we’re happy with the way the guys stuck with it.”
Derek Roy and Nikita Nikitin also scored for the Oilers in the 5-4 win.
Viktor Fasth made 20 saves on the night for the win.
“I think we played good tonight,” Fasth said. “When you’re in shootouts, it’s always 50-50, I think, but we’ve been able to win two in a row now and that’s really good. [We’re] finishing off here before the break on a high note.”
Alex Ovechkin scored twice as Jay Beagle and Nicklas Backstrom also scored for the Caps.
“Throughout the year we’ve been strong [at protecting leads],” Beagle said. “We’ve been working on it and we were a lot better. In the last three games, we got away from it a little bit. I think we take our foot off the gas and kind of let teams creep back in. It’s a learning process and we’ve just got to make sure we learn from it and make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
In Detroit, the visiting Minnesota Wild were trailing the Red Wings by three in the third period when they stormed back to tie the game at 4 all to force extra time.
The game was decided in a shootout with Pavel Datsyuk and Gustav Nyquist scoring in the skills competition to salvage the win for the Wings.
“It’s obviously not the way we wanted to win the game. We found a way in the end. It was nice to get the two points,” Nyquist said. “Up 4-1, going into the third, let them tie it up. We didn’t do a good enough job of playing above them; I think they got on the inside.”
Zach Parise scored twice in the third and a Thomas Vanek sighting in the third helped even the game at the end of regulation.
“We had a chance to win the game. We were in a pretty big hole against a real good team,” Parise said. “We came back to have a chance to win.”
For Vanek it was his ninth of the year.
“The mood was fine. No one was hanging their heads. We said, ‘Keep going,'” Vanek said. “We were happy with the way we were playing the first two periods. We gave up 12 shots. They just got a couple of bounces.”
In Manhattan, the New York Rangers were looking to get past an Ottawa Senators team that has given them at Madison Square Garden for years. It took a Carl Hagelin deflection in extra time to finally settle the match with a 3-2 win for New York.
“I’ve said before they can’t all be Picassos, and this was definitely [not] one of them,” Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said. “This game is about finding ways to win, finding ways to win when you’re not at your best, and that’s what we did.”
The Rangers are 16-3-0 in their last 19 and head into the All Star break on a high note.
“The whole game was sluggish from our part,” Hagelin said. “At the same time we played harder tonight and we didn’t give up too much other than those five minutes of the second. I think it shows a lot of character coming back, and even though we didn’t play great, we found a way to get two points.”
The Senators held a 2-1 lead in the third when Chris Kreider took a perfect from Martin St Louis to knot the score at two all.
“It was definitely a character win,” Kreider said. “We probably didn’t have the start we wanted, had a few lulls, but it says a lot about the leadership in the room that we were able to gather ourselves and be ready.
“You can’t drop a game like that, can’t lose a close one. That was huge for us.”
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