Capitals blank Kings to maintain home success
WASHINGTON -- The Washington Capitals continued to flex their offensive muscles, routing the Los Angeles Kings 5-0 on Sunday for their ninth straight home victory.
The Kings, who came into the contest winners of five straight, were no match for the high-octane Capitals, who scored at least four goals for the 14th time in their last 19 games.
Lars Eller, Marcus Johansson, Brett Connolly, T.J. Oshie and Justin Williams all lit the lamp for Washington, which now has an NHL-best 78 points. Backup goalie Philipp Grubauer stopped 38 shots to earn his third shutout of the season.
Kings netminder Peter Budaj, who entered the game coming off back-to-back shutouts, was often helpless to stop the great scoring opportunities Washington registered and finished with just 11 saves.
The capper to Budaj's bad day came in the second period, when Oshie rifled a perfect shot right over Budaj's shoulder that shattered the goalie's water bottle and gave Washington a 4-0 advantage. He was replaced by Jeff Zatkoff to start the third.
The Capitals got on the board first and did it quickly, as Connolly fed Eller with a perfect pass in front of the net. Eller had so much time, he was able to gather the puck and deke a shot before firing past Budaj to give Washington a 1-0 lead just 3:16 into the contest.
The Capitals have scored first 38 times this season and are now 30-4-4 when doing so, the top mark in the NHL.
Washington got another easy tally later in the first period, as Evgeny Kuznetsov found Johansson wide open in front of the net. The Capitals center did not miss, beating Budaj to the far post to make it 2-0 and signaling the rout was on.
The Capitals honored Alexander Ovechkin before the game for reaching the 1,000-point milestone last month, and the veteran winger got in on the fun with a second-period assist to raise his career total to 1,014.
This is the ninth straight year the Capitals have hosted a game on Super Bowl Sunday, and they are now 17-8-2 all-time when playing before the Super Bowl.
NOTES: The Capitals re-assigned F Jakub Vrana to Hershey of the AHL. It was a brief stint with the big club for Vrana, who was called up Feb. 3 and did not play. ... Darryl Sutter has now coached 396 games for the Kings, tied for second place on the team's all-time games coached list. Andy Murray is first with 480 games behind the bench. ... D Taylor Chorney was Washington's scratch. Los Angeles scratched D Paul LaDue and F Andy Andreoff. ... The Kings continue their four-game road trip Tuesday at Tampa Bay. The Capitals play game two of their four-game homestand Tuesday versus Carolina.