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Martin Jones Jersey , Va. (AP) Alex Ovechkin covered his eyes with his gloved hands in disbelief. Barry Trotz hid his disbelief inside.Chandler Stephenson had the perfect view and didn’t like the odds. The net was wide open and Braden Holtby reached his stick across and stopped Alex Tuch’s shot in the final minutes to save the game.”I thought, `Oh, no, no, no,”’ Stephenson said. ”And then his paddle was there and he made the save and I just couldn’t believe it.”Holtby’s unbelievable move might go down as one of the most important moments in Stanley Cup history. It allowed the Washington Capitals to even the final against the Vegas Golden Knights and served as further evidence of Holtby’s dominant playoff run.Most of the buzz going into the Cup Final surrounded Vegas goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, a deserved Conn Smythe favorite who already has two championship rings. But Holtby stole the show in making 37 saves in Game 2 and returned to his career-long playoff dominance after allowing five goals on 33 shots in a Game 1 that was far from goalie-friendly. It’s the kind of play his Capitals teammates have come to expect this time of year.”The guy’s just a machine,” defenseman Matt Niskanen said. ”Boy, has he been good. Making the saves that he’s supposed to make look really routine and he’s made some game changers – none better than the one with a couple minutes left in Game 2.”Holtby is not impressed.Trotz has watched ”the save” a handful of times, and Holtby has analyzed it but believes ”there’s a lot more saves that I’ve made even these two games that I like a lot more than that one.” The laser-focused 2016 Vezina Trophy winner is far more worried about how to not need to make that desperate of a stop in Game 3 Saturday night and beyond.”You hope that next time you get more of your body behind it and give it less chance of going in,” Holtby said Friday. ”You try and find little areas where you can limit the chance of the puck going in instead of just hoping it doesn’t.”The 28-year-old doesn’t make saves on hope. Since he made his NHL playoff debut as a rookie in 2012
http://www.officialsharks.com/authentic-adidas-logan-couture-jersey , Holtby has a 2.04 goals-against average and .929 save percentage – fourth- and second-best all-time among goalies with at least 50 games of experience.In other words, Holtby is no one-save pony. In these playoffs, he’s 13-7 with a 2.19 GAA and .921 save percentage since replacing Philipp Grubauer in Game 2 of the first round.”Thank God he’s our goalie,” Ovechkin said. ”He’s over there when we need him.”Holtby wasn’t where he needed to be in February, when he had a stretch of 11 games in which he allowed 41 goals and took some time off to ”reset.” He worked with goaltending coach Scott Murray on some technical adjustments, got his mind right and has felt a noticeable change since.”It was more a mental thing,” Holtby said. ”Every year’s different, every situation, and I was just getting to a point where I was seeing the play one step ahead of it instead of waiting for it to come, and just being a little bit more patient and expecting the unexpected.”It doesn’t get more unexpected than the weird bounce late in Game 2 that preceded his save on Tuch. Maybe that puck goes in 99 times out of 100, but Holtby has shown the ability to make the unpredictable save that stuns friends and foes alike.”Saves like the one in the third period definitely make him a tough goaltender to beat
http://www.officialsharks.com/authentic-adidas-tomas-hertl-jersey ,” former Capitals and current Golden Knights defenseman Nate Schmidt said. ”He’s never out of a save. He’s a guy that can recover well, he’s got quick feet and he’s just very athletic.”From the other end of the rink, Fleury – who has allowed seven goals in the series and not been nearly as unbeatable as he was in the first three rounds – can admire Holtby’s play even if he doesn’t like it.”I think it’s an awesome save,” Fleury said. ”I don’t appreciate it, though. I’d rather it be a goal.”Holtby has done a spectacular job of not only limiting goals but making almost every save on shots he has been able to see. Even if teammates are watching through their fingers on the bench, they appreciate that and are uplifted by it.”He steps up in the big moments,” defenseman Christian Djoos said. ”The saves he makes, in playoffs you need it.”NOTES: Capitals C Evgeny Kuznetsov took part in an optional practice after leaving Game 2 Wednesday clutching his left arm and not returning. Trotz said Kuznetsov had not been cleared, considers him day to day, and expects Washington’s leading scorer to be a game-time decision. … Capitals D Brooks Orpik, who took a slash from Erik Haula late in Game 2
Womens Alexander Steen Jersey , had his left pinkie wrapped but expects to be able to continue playing. Orpik did not skate Friday. … Vegas coach Gerard Gallant said F William Carrier is getting close and should ”be available in the near future.”—More Stanley Cup coverage:
https://apnews.com/tag/StanleyCupFinals— WASHINGTON (AP) — A dominant first period and a three-goal lead had the Florida Panthers feeling a little too good about cruising toward their first victory of the season.“You feel comfortable, but I think we can’t feel too comfortable,” forward Jonathan Huberdeau said.The Panthers blew that lead and allowed the tying goal with 85 seconds left in regulation before Huberdeau scored the shootout winner to beat the Washington Capitals 6-5 on Friday night and end a four-game season-opening skid.Huberdeau and Vincent Trocheck each had a goal and two assists and scored in the shootout to give Florida a badly-needed boost.“We needed to get into the win column,” Trocheck said. “We definitely needed that win and, hopefully, the floodgates will open now.”Florida has been a team of floodgates this season, scoring and allowing three consecutive goals for the second game in a row. This time, they went from a 1-all tie to up 4-1 on goals by Evgenii Dadonov, Colton Sceviour and Jared McCann and lost it when Washington’s Brett Connolly, Jakub Vrana and Devante Smith-Pelly all beat James Reimer in a span of less than 12 minutes.In a wacky, back-and-forth game that became a battle of backup goaltenders
Brayden Schenn Jersey , the Panthers got the one or two saves and the production they needed to get over the hump. Michael Hutchinson stopped 10 of the 11 shots he faced in regulation and overtime and made a couple of more saves in the shootout, and shootout goals by captain Aleksander Barkov, Trocheck and Huberdeau sent them home happy.“It’s a sense of relief, for sure,” said Huberdeau, who scored a 5-on-3 power-play goal with 50.2 seconds left in the second period that gave Florida a 5-4 lead. “Being so close every game to get a win, now we finally got it, the first one.”The first one could have come in regulation, but Nicklas Backstrom scored a 6-on-4 goal on the power play with backup Pheonix Copley pulled for the extra attacker and 1:25 left in the third. Getting to overtime allowed the defending Stanley Cup champions to salvage a point from a rough, inconsistent effort.“We were like two different teams the first period and then the rest of the game after that,” Capitals center Lars Eller said. “There was a lot of good stuff and some bad stuff we’ve got to correct.”Washington starter Braden Holtby got the hook after allowing four goals on 11 shots in the first period
Authentic Carl Gunnarsson Jersey , including Trocheck’s 9:11 in that went in off Eller’s skate. Much like that goal, Holtby was hardly to blame as the victim of some inexplicable turnovers by his teammates.The move to Copley to start the second and some line-shuffling by coach Todd Reirden sparked the Capitals, who beat Reimer four times on 20 shots to send him to the bench. Copley stopped 18 of 19 shots to help the comeback, which was as much a sign of the Panthers’ maddening up-and-down play as anything else.“That snowball effect again — we got rolling and shot ourselves in the foot a little bit,” Florida coach Bob Boughner said. “But we found a way to win tonight. We talked about winning the first game and how good it’s going to feel, get the monkey off our back a little bit. Now I think we can move ahead. It would’ve been tough losing that game.”NOTES: Panthers D Mark Pysyk left the game in the second period with an upper-body injury after taking a hit from Alex Ovechkin and did not return. Boughner said Pysyk was still being evaluated. … F Dmitrij Jaskin returned to the Capitals’ lineup, replacing Nathan Walker.UP NEXTPanthers: Get defenseman Mike Matheson back from his two-game suspension when they return home to face the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday.Capitals: Begin a three-game Western Canadian road trip at the Vancouver Canucks on Monday before visiting Edmonton and Calgary.
