Caps hang on for shootout win in Montreal

After 20 minutes of play in Montreal on Saturday night, the Washington Capitals had a comfortable 2-0 lead over the Canadiens.

Maybe that lead was too comfortable.

The Habs stormed back and stung the Caps with three goals over the next two periods and were 11.6 seconds from the win, until Eric Fehr(notes) scored his second goal of the night to lift his team into extra time.

“For 59 minutes and 40 seconds, we had a great effort,” Habs coach Jacques Martin said. “It’s disappointing to lose a point.”

Capitals forward Nicklas Backstrom(notes) scored the lone goal in the shootout to give Washington the 4-3 win.

“We don’t like losing, and especially with the way we played in the last couple of periods we wanted to fight back,” Fehr said. “We have a lot of guys on our team that don’t like to lose and you can definitely see that, especially in the last periods of games.”

Semyon Varlamov(notes) made 21 stops, plus all three shootout attempts in the win, raising his record to 10-1-2 and helping his team improve to 15-5-6, tops in the Eastern Conference.

Carey Price(notes) turned away 20 saves as the Habs (12-12-2) dropped their second game in a row.

Jaroslav Spacek(notes), Tomas Plekanec(notes) and Marc-Andre Bergeron(notes) scored for Montreal while Alex Ovechkin(notes) had the other goal for Washington.

Fehr opened the scoring 8:47 into the first by getting in front of Price and tipping a shot from Karl Alzner(notes) from just inside the Habs blue-line. The shot may not have had a lot of power, but Fehr’s deflection fooled Price through the five-hole.

Backstrom and Ovechkin teamed up 1:12 later to make it 2-0. Heading into the Montreal zone on a 2-on-2, Backstrom flipped a pass over to his linemate, who one-timed it under the blocker of Price for Ovechkin’s 18th goal of the season.

At the tail end of a Canadiens power play, Sergei Kostitstyn started the team’s best chance with a wraparound attempt that had Varlamov scrambling on his hands and knees through the crease. The puck drifted through the blue paint but no one could get a stick on it.

With under four minutes remaining, Habs defenceman Paul Mara(notes) blasted a shot at the top of the slot on a breakout chance, but Varlamov was able to stick a leg out and send the Canadiens to the dressing room searching for answers on how to solve the Russian rookie.

With less than two minutes to go in the opening period, the Canadiens were trying to figure out how to contain Ovechkin. The hulking forward pushed around Habs defenceman Spacek to gain entrance into the offensive zone, spun around to lose his defender and sidestepped around Ryan White(notes) before cycling the puck.

Later in that same shift, the “Great Eight” also laid out Spacek as the two raced toward a loose puck behind the Montreal goal.

Montreal’s Glen Metropolit(notes) told Hockey Night in Canada’s Elliotte Friedman in the first intermission that “[Ovechkin]’s that good, we gotta keep an eye on him — it seemed like he had the puck for a couple of minutes out there.”

Ovechkin may have been motivated by the presence of Vladislav Tretiak, the general manager Russia’s Olympic hockey team.

“I think Alex is pretty well on the team, but I think he wanted to go out there and do a good job for him,” Capitals head coach Bruce Boudreau said.

Ovechkin continued his puck possession monopoly in the opening moments of the second by escaping to a breakaway. Price followed his deke flawlessly and stuck out his left leg to stop the sniper.

“If I score on that breakaway, maybe it’s a different game,” Ovechkin said. “But I didn’t score, Price gave them a big boost and they scored two goals.”

That save swung the momentum in Montreal’s favour and instead of being down 3-0, the Caps’ Jay Beagle(notes) went off for tripping at 3:44 and the Canadiens capitalized thanks to some traffic in front of Varlamov.

Spacek rifled a shot from the point through a maze of players, including Max Pachioretty and Maxim Lapierre(notes), who brought their Washington defenders in the slot to screen their goalie and cut the lead to 2-1.

Just past the midway point of the second, Price once again came up huge for his team — this time with a pair of spectacular stops. The first came off an Ovechkin shot from in close and the second stop on Beagle’s subsequent rebound. That performance had the Montreal fans at the Bell Centre chanting their appreciation: “Ca-rey, Car-ey.”

Price’s saves once again seemed to spur his team, as they kept the puck in the Capitals end of the ice and notched the tying goal at the 13:50 mark. Plekanec cut through the slot for a shot and with Cammalleri crashing the net and drawing the attention of the Washington defence, it gave Plekanec more room to operate. He fired his second chance past Varlamov to make it 2-2.

The Habs had the advantage early in the third when Alexandre Giroux(notes) was whistled for a tripping call 3:17 in, which was improved to 1:17 of 5-on-3 time when Brooks Laich(notes) was called for holding in the Capitals zone during the initial penalty kill.

Varlamov held down the fort almost a minute of that two-man advantage but with Travis Moen(notes) providing a screen, Bergeron beat the goalie with a wrister from the point to pull ahead 3-2.

White made a big stop on a Washington power play when he blocked a shot from Mike Green(notes) and smothered the puck in the high slot. Thanks to some careful shot blocking, the Habs held the Capitals to zero shots through their two power plays.

With the Capitals pressing for the tying goal and their net empty, they were handed a 6-on-4 advantage as Mara took a cross-checking penalty.

Backstrom won the face off, shovelled it to Fehr, who found Oveckin for a shot at the top of the left face-off circle.

Fehr went straight toward the net and was there to put in the rebound in the dying seconds to send the game to overtime.

“We have to stay out of the penalty box and stop taking stupid penalties,” Habs defenceman Roman Hamrlik(notes) said. “When we have the lead, we have to play tough, but not stupid.”

Nothing was decided in extra time, so it was off to a shootout, where Cammalleri, Plekanec and Lapierre were denied for Montreal before Backstrom potted the winner as the last shooter in the third round.