WASHINGTON — Alex Ovechkin made NHL history with career goal No. 767, helping to likely extinguish any (extremely) slim playoff hopes the Islanders may have harbored.
The Islanders needed a regulation win, plain and simple. Instead, they lost a 4-3, eight-round shootout to fall 19 points behind the Capitals for the Eastern Conference’s final wild-card spot.
It denied the Islanders (24-24-9), now 1-6 in shootouts, their first four-game winning streak of the season. But Semyon Varlamov’s 29 save performance, including brilliant saves on defenseman Justin Schultz, Evgeny Kuznetsov and Ovechkin in overtime, was a good showcase in advance of Monday’s NHL trade deadline.
