Washington Capitals at Ottawa Senators

Drake Batherson scores twice, Senators beat Capitals 5-2

Shane Pinto broke a tie in third and Tyler Motte and Alex DeBrincat added empty-net goals. Anton Forsberg stopped 22 shots.

“It’s a different team here and there’s more maturity, and they’re able to be more composed and they’re able to turn it up another gear,” Senators coach D.J. Smith said. “Clearly, we weren’t at the gear we wanted to be, but give that dressing room credit. Those guys, you know what they did is got themselves ready for the second and third.”

T.J. Oshie and Anthony Mantha scored for Washington on first-period power plays. Darcy Kuemper made 39 saves.

“I feel like the first 20 (minutes) we were chipping pucks with speed, going on the forecheck and turning pucks over,” Oshie said. “By the end of the first, I thought we’d backed them up a little bit. I believe we had some entries just by carrying the puck.

“We were shooting, we were supporting each other, and that kind of just went away. I don’t know, maybe they tired us out or we got a little overconfident with the puck, or whatever it was.”

Ottawa took the lead 5:53 into the third when Tyler Motte found a trailing Pinto, who scored on a wrist shot from the slot. Pinto has goals in three straight games.

Moments later, Forsberg made a save on Marcus Johansson to preserve the lead.

“I just tried to get something over there and I was kind of lucky it hit my glove,” Forsberg said. “I mean obviously that’s one of the saves you want to make as a kid so it’s always nice.”

Pinto played just five games last season because of a shoulder injury.

“Just to play a game, that’s all I wanted to do,” Pinto said. “But definitely to help the team win, that’s what I wanted to do coming into this year, but I definitely visualized this.”

UP NEXT

Capitals: Host Los Angeles on Saturday night.

Senators: Host Arizona on Saturday.

OTT leads series 1-0