With time growing short in the NHL’s regular season it is the process of winning games that matters most to the Capitals now.
They took plenty of joy, of course, from a wild 5-4 overtime win over the Buffalo Sabres at Verizon Center on Saturday night. With the win Washington (46-22-11, 103 points) moved alone into first place in the Eastern Conference for the first time since Dec. 3. But it wasn’t exactly championship hockey, either.
Jason Arnott scored a 6-on-4 goal with the goalie pulled, just 52 seconds remaining in regulation and the Caps down one. That tied the score at 4. Alex Ovechkin then won it at 3:19 of overtime when an apparent pass attempt hit the stick of Buffalo forward Jason Pominville and then the skate of defenseman Andrej Sekera before slipping past goalie Jhonas Enroth (30 saves).
“I thought it was way too close to looking like last year,” said Caps coach Bruce Boudreau, whose team made these high-scoring, back-and-forth contests a regular feature last season. “So we’ve got to buckle down a little bit.”
Washington appeared on its way to an easy win when it scored twice in the first 4 minutes, 41 seconds of the game. The Caps struck just 37 seconds in when a long Buffalo possession ended and Washington broke out with a 2-on-1. Defenseman John Carlson’s shot was stopped by Enroth, but Mike Knuble knocked the puck out of the air and in. It was his 22nd goal of the year.
The Caps struck again just over four minutes later. A Nicklas Backstrom shot was about to trickle across the goal line when Alex Semin gave it a final push for the 2-0 lead.
Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff called timeout to settle his team and it seemed to work. Thomas Vanek tipped home a shot just 1:49 later to cut the deficit to 2-1. Then a relatively soft shot by Drew Stafford skipped in front of Washington goalie Michal Neuvirth (34 saves) and went right between his legs to tie the score 2-2 at 9:28 of the first period.
The Sabres – in a desperate fight for a playoff berth – went ahead on a Paul Gaustad goal at 12:35 of the third period, gave up the lead when Knuble scored again 103 seconds later and then took it back on Drew Stafford’s power-play tally with 3:21 remaining.
“Three of the goals we put in our own net. But I thought [Neuvirth] did a really good job of staying composed and not letting things get to him,” Boudreau said of his 23-year-old goalie. “Just battling the battle. And I thought we did a real good job of coming back and not hanging our heads and saying ‘Oh, well. Let’s wait until tomorrow.’”
Buffalo already knew that Carolina had won its game and the Hurricanes would creep to within a point if it couldn’t hold the lead. So it was painful blow when Arnott settled a rebound off an Ovechkin shot and flipped a backhander into the goal. The overtime winner was just an added dagger. The Sabres (39-29-10, 88 points) at least gained a point and are a single standings point ahead of the No. 8 New York Rangers and two up on No. 9 Carolina. All three teams have four games left to play and little margin for error.
As for the Caps, it’s been a roller-coaster ride from top of the conference in early December, an arduous eight-game losing streak chronicled on national television, a thrilling win at the Winter Classic and another dry spell in February before winning nine straight last month. On Saturday night Washington looked too much like the team that struggled to hold leads in 2009-10 while playing a wild, crazy brand of games that often defied logic.
“You miss [those high-scoring games] and you’re happy about them when you come out on top,” Knuble said. “And I guess you’re due for one or two of those in the last little bit….[But] don’t overanalyze it. Be happy with the points and being in first place and move on.”
