Colorado @ Washington Capitals 3-7
The Capitals hadn't scored the first goal of a game in almost a month. Saturday they did, and kept on going. Justin Williams scored the first of four first-period goals in a 7-3 win against the Avalanche at Verizon Center, breaking a nine-game stretch of not having a 1-0 lead. Alex Ovechkin, Evgeny Kuznetsov, John Carlson, Nate Schmidt, Dmitry Orlov and Karl Alzner scored for Washington. It was the first time four defensemen scored in a game for the Capitals since Dec. 4, 1992, and the first time since March 7, 2013 that the Capitals scored seven goals from seven players, and four goals in the first period. Cody McLeod, Nathan MacKinnon and Andreas Martinsen scored for Colorado. Reto Berra made seven saves but was pulled after the first period. Calvin Pickard made 18 saves in relief.
Williams gave Washington a 1-0 lead at 3:05 of the first period, it's first since Oct. 30 against the Columbus Blue Jackets. As a Capitals power play expired, Jason Chimera played the puck behind the net and passed to Williams, who scored on Berra with a one-timer from the slot. The goal was Williams' fifth of the season; he has four points in his past five games. Ovechkin scored at 7:15 for a 2-0 lead. His 10th goal of the season was a wrist shot from the deep slot off a Nicklas Backstrom pass from the corner boards. The Capitals went up 3-0 at 10:00 with Carlson's fourth goal of the season; he beat Berra short side with a slap shot from the point off a Kuznetsov feed. Schmidt scored with 43 seconds remaining for a 4-0 lead. He picked up Marcus Johansson's rebound at the top of the left circle and scored his first of the season.
McLeod scored to make it 4-1 at 3:51 of the second period. Washington couldn't clear the zone and McLeod scored on a feed from Blake Comeau for his fourth of the season. MacKinnon scored on a power play at 18:01 of the second to make it 4-2, his ninth of the season. He beat Holtby with a wrist shot from a Gabriel Landeskog feed. Kuznetsov gave the Capitals a 5-2 lead at 6:34 of the third period with his seventh goal of the season. Orlov scored his first goal of the season with 9:53 remaining to make it 6-2. When Chimera passed to Orlov from behind the net, the puck lodged itself in Orlov's pants, and everyone else on the ice lost sight of it and stopped playing. The puck dropped out and Orlov was able to dance into the slot and score. It was Orlov's first NHL goal since March 2, 2014; he did not play last season because of a wrist injury. Martinsen scored his first NHL goal at 11:52 of the third to make it 6-3. Alzner made it 7-3 with his goal with 3:36 remaining.
Patrick Roy: "Obviously, for us to have a chance to beat a team like them, we need to have a perfect night from our goaltender and we need to defend better. I didn't think we defended well in the first and, I guess, our goalie was not at his best tonight. It was a tough task for him in some ways, because he played a lot of games lately for us. If we want to have a chance to win against teams like that, we need to be much better with our puck management."
Andreas Martinsen: "You want to help the team win when you score a goal. In a 7-3 game, it doesn't really matter. Now the first one is out of the way, and hopefully there is more coming. I don't have to think about that anymore, I can just keep going. Hopefully, next one can help us win. We just have to get back in Winnipeg (on Monday) and try to get a win."
Phoenix Coyotes @ Winnipeg 2-3
Chris Thorburn scored shorthanded in the third period to help the Jets to a 3-2 win against the Coyotes at MTS Centre. Thorburn won a race with Michael Stone to a loose puck and pushed Stone aside before backhanding his third goal of the season past Coyotes goaltender Anders Lindback with 8:51 remaining. Winnipeg won a second consecutive game and finishes a three-game homestand Monday against the Colorado Avalanche. Jets goaltender Ondrej Pavelec left after the second period because of a lower-body injury. Cheap shot Shane Doan collided with Pavelec while driving to the net with 4:46 left in the second. Doan received a minor penalty for goaltender interference. Pavelec made 20 saves on 22 shots. Maurice said that he will not have an update on Pavelec's status until Sunday. Multiple media outlets reported via Twitter that Pavelec left MTS Centre on crutches. Michael Hutchinson earned the win after replacing Pavelec at the start of the third period. He made seven saves.
Mark Scheifele gave the Jets a 1-0 lead 6:50 into the game on his third goal in the past two games. But Doan answered on the power play 2:40 later, and another goal on the man-advantage from Connor Murphy put the Coyotes up 2-1 at 15:49. Dustin Byfuglien evened the game at 2-2 midway through the second period. A strong Jets forecheck set up their first goal. Stone had to force a pass to Antoine Vermette along the boards, where Scheifele stripped him of the puck. The Jets center moved into the slot before putting a wrist shot on net that trickled between Lindback's pads for his eighth goal. Doan's tying goal continued his hot pace. After scoring three goals in his first 15 games, Doan has three in his past five. Doan is five goals away from tying Dale Hawerchuk's franchise record of 379 goals. Phoenix's power play started the game ranked 29th in the NHL, but they have at least one goal in each of the past three games. Byfuglien's sixth goal tied the game 2-2 at 12:48 of the second period. Drifting into the high slot, he took Andrew Copp's soft pass and put a low shot blocker-side past Lindback. Byfuglien's goal came one minute after the Jets failed to convert on a power play.
Chris Thorburn: "I'm just proud of our team the way we battled. There were times where things weren't pretty, but we stayed with it and came up with two points."
Paul Maurice: "[Thorburn] does the same things whether he plays three minutes or 15 minutes. He's such a good pro here. He has been very, very consistent. His game has been good for us all [season]. We'll take [that] goal from anybody, but it's really great when you can get a heart-and-soul guy scores a goal like that. (It was) just all effort. [Byfuglien's goal] broke the tension of our power play. We had just come off, and your best players [were] on, and there's nothing going on. Byfuglien's goal allowed us to forget the power play."
Michael Hutchinson: "The team did a great job battling in front of me and making my game pretty easy. I didn't get too much work, which is always nice when you're coming in cold."
Nashville @ Minnesota 0-4
After battling injury and illness on the road, the Minnesota Wild were in desperate need of some home cooking. Playing without forwards Zach Parise and Justin Fontaine and defenseman Marco Scandella, the Wild celebrated the beginning of a four-game homestand with a 4-0 win against the Predators at Xcel Energy Center. The win ended a three-game losing streak for the Wild, who capped a four-game road trip with back-to-back regulation losses for the first time this season. Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk made 23 saves for his third shutout, tied with three others for most in the NHL. His 11 wins are tied with Martin Jones of the San Jose Sharks for the League lead. Minnesota scored first for the first time in five games after falling behind in every game of its trip, which the Wild finished 1-2-1. Nashville was shut out for the second time in as many nights; it lost 4-0 against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Friday. It was the first time since Nov. 2013 that the Predators were held scoreless in consecutive games. Suter, Mikael Granlund, Jonas Brodin and Thomas Vanek scored for Minnesota, who are 8-1-0 at home. Suter's goal at 6:53 of the first period made it through a screen by Vanek in front and was his third, surpassing his total from all of last season. It was his first goal against his former team in his 15th game against Nashville since signing with the Wild as a free agent in July of 2012.
Granlund made it a two-goal game at 1:44 of the second, capitalizing on a rebound of a shot by defenseman Christian Folin. Less than seven minutes later, Brodin's shot from the left circle made it through traffic for his first of the season at 8:06. Vanek scored early in the third period after a tripping penalty on Ryan Ellis put the Wild on a power play. His redirection of a Jason Pominville pass slipped through Pekka Rinne's five-hole and sat in the crease. Rinne didn't see the puck slip through and Vanek swept it into the goal for his team-leading eighth of the season. Pominville finished with two assists. Mikko Koivu, playing in his 700th NHL game, had an assist. Rinne made 23 saves but lost consecutive starts for the first time this season.
Ryan Suter: "We hadn't been playing well on the road. We knew we had to come home and get this thing turned around quick. I thought we did that and we finally played 60 minutes. Power play was good, penalty kill was good, goalie was good. Now we have to build on it. As soon as that went in, that was a lot of relief for our team. We've been chasing and I think that's what's taken from our structure and the way we're used to playing."
Mike Yeo: "We knew that coming back home would energize us. But we also said that coming back home wasn't going to solve everything. I saw a lot more purpose in a lot more of the little things that have been ailing us."
Thomas Vanek: "We talked about playing good hockey right off the bat. I think that was one of our most complete games. I felt great today, it was one of those nights where I wanted the puck a lot. I felt I was making things happen, making plays."
Peter Laviolette: "Same score, but two different games. [Friday] night, we had an awful lot of quality scoring chances, we just didn't score. Tonight was a different story. They defended pretty good. We didn't seem to be in synch and have our jump to us, certainly not like last night."
Shea Weber: "We just didn't play good enough to win tonight. We weren't hungry enough, we're not getting to the interior of the ice. It's not easy against this team, but we just have to do a better job."
Chicago @ Vancouver Canucks 3-6
Coming off a long, disappointing road trip and facing the possibility of another blown lead in the third period, Daniel and Henrik Sedin turned things around quickly for the Vancouver Canucks. Daniel scored the go-ahead goal with 5:25 left in the third period and added his third goal of the game 2:01 later to lead the Canucks to a 6-3 win against the Chicago Blackhawks at Rogers Arena. Twin brother Henrik set up all three of Daniel's goals and finished with a goal and four assists for a career-best five-point night as the Canucks ended a four-game losing streak. Chicago's Artem Anisimov tied the game at 3-3 with 7:40 left in the third period, and it looked like the Canucks might lose after blowing a third-period lead for the sixth time this season. But Henrik Sedin fed his brother with a cross-ice pass off the rush, and Daniel Sedin beat Corey Crawford on the blocker side from the left faceoff dot to restore Vancouver's lead just 2:15 after surrendering it. Daniel completed his sixth career hat trick, but first since December 2011, on his next shift by redirecting another rush pass from Henrik out of the air and past Crawford. The Canucks have been on the wrong side of that line lately, but were looking to reset in their first game back home after a long 1-4-2 road trip. It's no surprise the Sedins led the way. Alexandre Burrows rounded out the scoring into an empty net and Ryan Miller made 26 saves for the Canucks, who came into the game just 5-1-4 when leading after two periods. When Anisimov got a lucky bounce to finish a dominant shift led by linemate Patrick Kane, who extended his career-best point streak to 16 games with the second assist, it was a familiar feeling for the Canucks. The Sedins made sure it didn't last long. Jonathan Toews scored and set up Ryan Garbutt's first goal of the season for the Blackhawks, who were playing for a second straight night after a 2-1 overtime loss at the Calgary Flames on Friday. Crawford made 14 saves as Chicago reached the halfway point of its annual "Circus Trip," which concludes next week with three games in California. Kane has 10 goals and 16 assists during his streak. Coach Joel Quenneville seemed pleased with his team's performance, saying it "was twice as good" as the first two games on the long road trip and they gave up "half the chances." They just couldn't finish this one off. Toews opened the scoring on the first shot, beating Miller from the bottom of the left circle with a perfect short-side wrist shot on a power play at 6:17. But the Chicago captain was in the penalty box for tripping when the Canucks tied it just over three minutes later. With Niklas Hjalmarsson already in the box, Toews' penalty gave Vancouver a 5-on-3 for 70 seconds, and Henrik Sedin capitalized with two seconds left in the first penalty, beating a sprawling Crawford after corralling a hard cross-ice pass from Daniel. It was the 900th career point for Daniel, who joined Henrik (935 points) as the only Canucks players to reach that milestone. It kept panning out against Chicago.
Henrik added an assist on Hansen's goal with 4:42 left in the first period that gave the Canucks the lead. Hansen, who went to the locker room earlier after getting hit in the head by a slap shot, parked atop the crease and chipped Henrik's pass from behind the net past Crawford's glove. Garbutt tied it again with his first of the season 52 seconds later, and Chicago dominated early in the second period, outshooting the Canucks 7-1, before Garbutt took a penalty in the offensive zone. Daniel Sedin put Vancouver back ahead 21 seconds later after Henrik tapped Duncan Keith's stick in the corner, causing him to whiff on a clearing attempt and then passed across to Daniel alone in the low slot for a one-touch shot through the legs of a sliding Crawford.
Patrick Kane: "They had their way out there tonight. We played pretty well and controlled most of the game. You get yourself back 3-3 and a couple of shift later you're down 5-3. It's frustrating but those guys made some good plays."
Joel Quenneville: "The last five minutes, throw it in the garbage can. Tonight was one of those nights where they had the magic touch."
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