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WASHINGTON — The Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals renew a divisional rivalry Wednesday night when the New York Rangers visit Capital One Arena for the first of four meetings this season.New York will be playing for the second straight night after Tuesday’s 3-2 shootout victory over the Colorado Avalanche.Mats Zuccarello and Kevin Shattenkirk converted in the shootout and each had two assists for the Rangers (2-4-0). Chris Kreider and Kevin Hayes scored in regulation and Henrik Lundqvist made 31 saves. New York capped a 2-1 homestand in which all three games were decided by one goal.Article continues below ...Coach David Quinn wanted the Rangers to shoot more and Tuesday they put 43 shots on goal.“Obviously Authentic Oliver Bjorkstrand Jersey , if we’re going to score goals, we’ve got to get the puck to the net. We took a step forward tonight in that area,” Quinn said. “I thought we got pucks to the net and we went at it a little harder. … So, I thought that was a step in the right direction for us tonight.”The Rangers tallied only their second power-play goal in 18 chances on the seasonQuinn sat right wing Pavel Buchnevich in favor of left wing Cody McLeod.“This guy’s a talented player and I think one of the things he and I have talked about is we just need more out of him consistently,” Quinn said about Buchnevich before the game. “He’s got an awful lot of talent and skill but that’s not going to get you a lot of production offensively if you don’t do the other things you need to do offensively.”The Capitals (2-2-1) have lost two straight and scored two goals in the process.With three days off between games, the Capitals went back to basics. During Sunday’s practice, coach Todd Reirden’s team worked on stick handling drills. At the end of Tuesday’s practice, they worked on faceoffs. The Capitals rank 30th in the league in faceoff win percentage at 43.8.“Yeah, there’s little details that can help our game,” Lars Eller told NBCSportsWashington.com. “The more you have the puck, easier the game is going to be for you. We have a little more time in between games than usual during the season here, so we have the time to work on something like that, which can be little things that makes the difference.”The start of Sunday’s practice involved each Capital getting a puck and skating circles with it around the rink, working on their handling.“It was a surprise. I don’t think anyone saw that coming,” defenseman Matt Niskanen told the Washington Post. “Some guys just have it, the puck-handling skills. Other guys have to work at it a lot harder or you lose it.”The Capitals went 3-0-1 against the Rangers last season. All of the games were decided by two or fewer goals Ryan Murray Jersey , and two of the four contests were decided in either overtime or a shootout.Braden Holtby is 10-9-1 with a 2.42 goals against average, a .920 save percentage and one shutout against the Rangers. If Lundqvist goes back-to-back, he is 21-12-5, 2.66, .909 with four shutouts versus Washington.Alex Ovechkin is tied with Evgeny Kuznetsov and T.J. Oshie for the Capitals lead in goals with four. In his career, Ovechkin has scored 611 goals on 128 goaltenders. His most-frequent victim is Marc-Andre Fleury (23) with Lundqvist (22) next. Before Gerard Gallant embarked on his journey to coach the expansion Vegas Golden Knights, he and former boss Doug MacLean sat down for breakfast and wondered what was ahead.”He didn’t know what the situation was,” MacLean said. ”He thought it was going to be tough.”No one saw this coming – not Gallant, general manager George McPhee, their players, Vegas odds makers or anyone in hockey. Thanks to a never-before-seen combination of speed, motivation, confidence and goaltending, the Golden Knights already set the NHL record for victories by a first-year expansion team, sit comfortably atop the Pacific Division and are a near-lock to make the playoffs.Vegas stockpiled draft picks and young talent with the long-term future in mind. It also got franchise goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, 50-point producer Jonathan Marchessault and 27-goal-scorer William Karlsson and went from the league’s most pleasant surprise to a legitimate Stanley Cup contender.”Didn’t think we’d be in first place at this time of the year Sergei Bobrovsky Jersey , but the way they played and the confidence they got over the first 10 games, it grew with the team,” Gallant said. ”We’re a good hockey team, and we know it and when we play our game we’ve got a chance to beat anybody.”With Bill Foley paying $500 million to get a team, commissioner Gary Bettman sought to ensure Vegas would be competitive, so McPhee got to pick from the best player pool of any expansion franchise thus far. Even with that advantage, the Golden Knights on paper looked like a team lacking top-end scorers and defensemen that would need Fleury to steal games.”Everybody wanted them to be competitive, but they wanted them to be competitive enough but miss the playoffs by seven or eight points,” said MacLean, whose expansion 2000-01 Columbus Blue Jackets won just 28 games. ”This has caught them off-guard.”The Westgate sports book opened the Golden Knights 200-1 to win the Cup and sold a handful tickets when they fell to 500-1 over the summer. After Westgate vice president Jay Kornegay said ”no one cared to bet them early,” he and his colleagues around Las Vegas risk losing a ton of money on futures wagers for them to win the Pacific Division, Western Conference and the Cup.Off the ice, the Golden Knights became a rallying point for the community before they even played a game after the Oct. 1 shooting on the Strip killed 58 people and injured hundreds more. They won their first three and nine of their first 10, and Bettman said ”the bonding that has gone on is something that’s extraordinary.”The bond between these players is multilayered, notably because All-Star winger James Neal pointed out everyone had something to prove after being left unprotected in the expansion draft or getting traded to Vegas. Gallant was even literally left at the curb by the Florida Panthers when they fired him on the road last season, and each night a different player is motivated to perform against his old team.”You see a Tuesday night versus Columbus Womens Seth Jones Jersey , Will Karlsson is really excited to play and he goes out there and has a terrific game and guys look towards that each and every night,” defenseman Nate Schmidt said. ”You look towards that guy to give you a little extra spark no matter what city you’re in.”Previous expansion teams have had the same drive but couldn’t dream of this type of success. The Panthers and Mighty Ducks of Anaheim shared the old record with 33 victories in 1993-94, and Vegas is fast approaching Florida’s record 83 points with almost 30 games remaining.”Their fourth line was my first line,” said veteran coach Barry Trotz, who added he met most of his players on the 1998-99 expansion Nashville Predators in the press box when they were healthy scratches the previous year. ”We didn’t get a 30- and a 40-goal scorer. We didn’t have that. We didn’t have a No. 1 goaltender.”Analyst Ray Ferraro, who played for the expansion Atlanta Thrashers in 1999-2000, credited McPhee for putting the team together with an eye on the modern NHL and the way the game is headed.”They didn’t even consider a player that couldn’t skate, that wasn’t fast, because that is the premier element of the game today,” Ferraro said. ”They went fast, fast, fast and fast. So when you play Vegas, if you can’t keep up, eventually they just wear you down.”Winnipeg Jets coach Paul Maurice said Vegas doesn’t just skate fast but makes it hard on teams by moving the puck fast and making quick, smart decisions all over the ice. Calgary Flames captain Mark Giordano said teams around the league are now using the Golden Knights as a measuring stick.Even though it would take a historic fall for the Golden Knights not to make the playoffs, they’re trying to keep the expectations down internally.”If the season ended tomorrow Sonny Milano Jersey , then we’d be happy, but it doesn’t,” McPhee said. ”We all realize that it doesn’t mean anything until the season’s over and you know where you sit.”There has been a noticeable evolution from the start of the season when players expected to make mistakes to now when they expect to win. Gallant has instilled enough belief in all his players that they’ve returned it tenfold.”We are a group of guys that has come in Vegas with maybe not so much trust from all around the hockey world but a group of coaches that give us trust every night,” forward Pierre-Edouard Bellemare said. ”When you play the right way, you create a little bit your bounces and you create your luck a bit and that gives you confidence.”Confidence has been a constant for Vegas even after it lost Fleury, backup goaltender Malcolm Subban and No. 3 option Oscar Dansk to injury at the same time, staying afloat with fourth-stringer Maxime Lagace. Trotz said the Golden Knights have been ”playing with house money” all season, a feeling MacLean remembers from coaching the third-year Panthers in 1995-96 when they were in first place at Christmas.”You get to a point where you don’t think you can lose,” MacLean said.Long gone are the days of bare-bones expansion, and the Golden Knights’ success means Seattle is in line to get the same set of rules upon paying $650 million to become the 32nd team in a few years. With its three 2017 first-round picks all looking like top prospects and 12 selections in the top three rounds over the next three drafts, Vegas is already the blueprint for sustained success.Everyone’s just waiting to see how this Cinderella season ends up.”Before we crown them playoff champions here, there’s a lot of road to go,” Ferraro said. ”This is not a one-year flash. A lot of things are going right for them and that’s good planning and good fortune, but I think they’ve set themselves up for a real nice start to their franchise.”