Alex Ovechkin stormed down the tunnel after a third-period ejection ended his night 16 minutes early.
The Capitals have struggled all season to put teams away when they have a lead late in games. Now they had to both kill a five-minute major penalty and finish without Ovechkin, who was in the midst of his best game since returning from injury last week.
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Washington was up to the challenge. It killed that major penalty, survived another of the two-minute variety minutes later, and then relied on rookie goalie Semyon Varlamov down the stretch in a 2-0 victory over the Buffalo Sabres at Verizon Center.
Ovechkin scored a goal and had three or four more good chances spoiled by Buffalo goalie Ryan Miller (22 saves). But at 3 minutes, 38 seconds of the third, he drove Sabres forward Patrick Kaleta into the boards with a check from the side. Kaleta went down hard and came up with a bloody nose and referee Paul Devorski immediately leveled a five-minute boarding call and a game-misconduct penalty.
“I think it was not a five-minute penalty,” Ovechkin said. “I think max it’s got to be two minutes.”
It was the second time Ovechkin has been ejected from a game at home against Buffalo. The first was also a boarding call against then-Sabres forward Daniel Briere. That hit from behind has earned Ovechkin boos every time he’s returned to Buffalo since. The Caps won that game, 7-4, on Dec. 2, 2006.
Washington coach Bruce Boudreau also disagreed with the ejection of his star winger.
“We just watched it a half-dozen times and he hits him in the shoulder, in the side,” Boudreau said. “And Kaleta saw him coming. So it might have warranted a two-minute minor. But I don’t think it warranted anything more than that.”
The NHL office may have a different opinion. But that will have to wait until later in the week. Ovechkin, of course, was fined $2,500 for a slew-foot against Atlanta Thrashers forward Rich Peverly with 30 seconds left in an Oct. 22 game.
That one play overshadowed a fine night by both goalies. Boudreau praised Miller, who never faced a flurry of chances, but made several quality saves to keep the Caps’ lead at 1-0. Meanwhile, Varlamov posted his first regular-season shutout — though he did have two last spring in the Eastern Conference playoff series against the New York Rangers. The rookie netminder finished with 25 saves. He has been part of several of those blown third-period leads while between the pipes this season.
“It was like Varly was saying ‘I am not letting this happen to me again in the third period,’” Boudreau said.
And he didn’t. But Varlamov’s teammates helped by killing another third-period penalty — this time a delay-of-game assessed to defenseman Mike Green at 10:50 — and adding a late insurance goal. That wasn’t the case on Monday night in Ottawa when a 3-1 lead disappeared in an ugly final period and led to a 4-3 overtime loss. This time forward Eric Fehr batted home a beautiful behind-the-net pass from teammate Brendan Morrison to make it 2-0 at 13:38. That was too much for the Sabres to overcome.
“We didn’t want to rely on that [one-goal lead],” Fehr said. “We’ve had a little bit of penalty troubles and we wanted to make sure we had a little bit of insurance … . In the last couple of games we sat back and let the other team take the game to us.”
