MONTREAL – Let’s make some history, shall we? The Capitals took part in some major Canadiens history on Saturday night.
In beating Montreal 2-0, the Caps finished off the first three-game shutout streak for the Habs since October … 1949.
Coach Bruce Boudreau expected his team to skate into a “hornet’s nest” Saturday night at Bell Centre; the Habs were coming off a 7-0 loss to the Bruins and hadn’t scored since Sunday. But the streak continued – reaching a seemingly unbelievable 186 minutes and 5 seconds.
“We were trying to keep them off the score sheet as long as possible, because it’s frustrating when you’re playing at home and you haven’t scored and you try so hard and it doesn’t work,” Boudreau said.
Washington played a solid defensive game around goaltender Braden Holtby, cutting off and limiting Montreal’s chances.
“I just thought we played pretty good. It’s really tough when you know you wanna score and you haven’t scored,” Boudreau said. “And you take guys that are natural scorers – [Michael] Cammalleri’s always scored, he must be very frustrated. Everything that’s happening isn’t going right for him, and he’s a great player. That’s what we were worried about was one of their guys that hadn’t scored got a goal early, ’cause when that happens, they usually get two or three.”
They got none – for the third straight game.
And while Holtby earned praise for his second career shutout, he credited the Caps’ defense with making this bit of history.
“Any team gets pretty frustrated when they’re not scoring goals,” he said. “But we just stuck to our game plan. With their frustration, that was one of the main things we were saying between the second and third was to keep our composure and make sure we stuck to our game plan, and we did it very well.”
