Ovechkin's drought vs. Penguins ends

By DAVE MOLINARI

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

WASHINGTON

Washington coach Barry Trotz had watched his team go 0-3-1 in its previous four games, but he wasn’t ready to start throwing chairs around.

Or even harsh words, for that matter.

A couple of hours before the Capitals defeated the Penguins, 4-0, at the Verizon Center Wednesday night, Trotz suggested Washington simply had to get back in sync.

“We’ve gotten away from our game a little bit,” he said. “Therefore, it’s starting to pay us back in the wrong way. We just have to get back to our game, play with a little more urgency on both sides of the puck.

“Sometimes, you need a little bit of a jump-start, and sometimes that jump-start is not having success.”

And sometimes, that jump-start comes from having Alex Ovechkin shoot pucks, which he did often enough to score Washington’s first two goals.

The Penguins, who had won eight consecutive games against Washington before a 3-0 loss Dec. 27 at Consol Energy Center, now have lost two in a row to the Capitals — and failed to manufacture a goal in the process.

This defeat snapped a run of three victories in a row for the Penguins at the Verizon Center and dropped their record to 27-13-8. They are three points behind the first-place New York Islanders in the Metropolitan Division, and New York has a game in hand.

Center Sidney Crosby returned to the Penguins’ lineup after sitting out their 5-3 victory against Winnipeg the previous evening. He played between Chris Kunitz and David Perron on the top line.

Despite getting Crosby back, the Penguins rarely tested Capitals goalie Braden Holtby.

He was coming off a 4-3 loss in Columbus and his work this season in the second game when starting on consecutive nights - a 0-2-1 record and .861 save percentage - suggested the Penguins could have gotten him to crack if they’d subjected him to any significant pressure.

It didn’t happen.

The game was the Penguins’ debut for center Maxim Lapierre, acquired from St. Louis on Tuesday in a trade for Marcel Goc. He played primarily between Nick Spaling and Steve Downie on the third line.

Lapierre made it onto the scoresheet on one of his first shifts as a Penguin, but not in a way he cared for.

He picked up a minus when Ovechkin deflected a Karl Alzner point shot past Penguins goalie Marc-Andre Fleury at 4:50 of the opening period.

The goal was Ovechkin’s first point in his past four games against the Penguins, and his first home-ice goal against them since Feb. 7, 2010.

Ovechkin’s previous eight goals against the Penguins had all been scored in Pittsburgh.

He apparently enjoyed getting one in front of the home crowd, however, because he did it again during a power play at 17:19 of the second period.

Ovechkin took a feed from defenseman Mike Green and blew a slap shot past Fleury from the left dot for his league-leading 29th and a 2-0 lead.

Any comeback hopes the Penguins were nurturing disappeared at 11:02 of the third, when Eric Fehr of the Capitals flipped a shot past Fleury from the left side of the crease. Mike Green rubbed it in by scoring from inside the left circle at 12:24 to cap a two-on-one break.