In Washington, DC, Ilya Samsonov made 24 saves and shutout the New Hersey Devils, 4-0.
Ilya Samsonov got the shutout for the Washington Capitals
“Anytime you get some early good saves, you feel more comfortable and stay in the game,” Samsonov said. “I like it. … I think every goalie likes it.”
Alex Ovechkin scored twice for the Capitals in the win.
“When we track hard, we don’t give them much,” New Jersey’s Travis Zajac said. “I don’t know if we gave them too much, but the chances we did [give them], they’re a good team because they’ve got guys who know how to put the puck in the back of the net.”
The Caps improved to 22-4-7.
“I think we played with speed,” the Caps; Tom Wilson said. “We forechecked them well. We’ve got experience on our side and we wanted to take it to them early, take away their time and space. I think for the most part we did it.”
After Ovechkin scored his first of the game, Nicklas Backstrom pushed the lead to 2-0.
Conor Sheary made it 3-0 in the third period.
“It’s really impressive,” Sheary said. “I think he took it to heart when everybody was saying he had a bad start. He’s probably the hottest guy in the League right now. It seems like every shot he takes is dangerous, and it’s just amazing how many opportunities he’s able to get and how many goals he’s able to score.”
New Jersey dropped to 12-16-4 with the loss.
“Well, we lacked energy for sure,” Devils head coach Lindy Ruff said after his team’s fifth game in seven days. “I don’t know whether the schedule caught up to us, but it was teamwide, and when you don’t have energy you’re not skating as well, you’re not executing as well. We made some poor decisions early before we could even get into the game, and those decisions hurt us dearly.”
Scott Wedgewood made 27 saves in the loss.
“I asked the team to empty the tank after the first period,” Ruff said. “Obviously, it was a [first] period where we didn’t play well as a team, we didn’t skate well, so we tried to apply a little bit more pressure. I thought we got the most we could out of everybody. I think if you watch some of the execution and some of the shots, we were slow to release a couple power-play shots.”
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