*Photo from Yahoo News*
Things are all right in the U.S. capital so far. Hunter Shepard had a big night in goal, Alex Ovechkin scored twice, and the Washington Capitals defeated the New York Islanders with a 4-1 victory on Saturday night on Long Island.
The Capitals have been on a run as of late. They are 6-1-1 in their last 8 games and 7-4-2 to open the season after missing the playoffs last year. They blocked 32 shots to outmuscle the Islanders as they won both ends of the back to back after winning on Friday night.
Ovechkin said of the team's two straight wins that "Everybody was all in. It was back-to-back. We played against a good team. We all knew it wasn’t going to be so easy. Everybody played smart. Everybody played simple. Shepard today was unbelievable. Huge saves. Our defense did a good job at blocking shots."
Kicking off the scoring for the Capitals was Ovechkin. He scored his 3rd goal of the season 9:18 into the game, making it 1-0 Capitals with Evgeny Kuznetsov assisting. It stayed that way for almost exactly 10 minutes until Alexander Romanov tied the game for the Islanders, making it 1-1 on his first goal of the season.
Nic Dowd gave the Capitals a 2-1 lead with his first goal of the season 13:05 into the second period, assisted by John Carlson and Nicolas Aube-Kubel. Aliaksei Protas scored with 40 seconds left in the second to make it 3-1 Capitals entering the 3rd. With 3 seconds left in the game, Ovechkin sealed the win with an empty net goal.
Washington head coach Spencer Carbery said "Those second and third goals, to not only take the lead, but the third one even by Protas, Phillips makes a great play. Those are big. Now you can play from in front and what it does, as you can see what happens tonight, the Islanders had a ton of good looks, a lot of offensive zone time, but they are pressing, right? They're throwing things to the net, and now you are forcing the issue."
Getting the start in goal for the Capitals was the rookie Shepard, making his second career start in the NHL. Shepard had a dominating game, stopping all but one of the 37 shots he saw from the Islanders as he is now a perfect 2-0-0 in the NHL.
Starting in net for the Islanders opposite Shepard was Semyon Varlamov, who got the loss as his record dropped to 2-3-0 on the season. Varlamov turned aside 24 out of the 27 shots on goal the Capitals had, giving him a .889 save percentage.
New York forward Bo Horvat said of the team's 4th straight loss that "At certain parts of the year, you're going to go through adversity, and we're going through it right now. I mean, I thought, obviously, we had our chances tonight. It's just a matter of it going in for us. Right now, we got to bear down around the net, obviously, and start scoring some goals."
The Capitals get back in action on Tuesday night when the Vegas Golden Knights come to town, with Darcy Kuemper the projected starter. The Islanders hit the road to take on the Edmonton Oilers on Monday, with Ilya Sorokin expected to start.
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