After completing a 3-1-1 trip, the Washington Capitals return home to play the Toronto Maple Leafs in a matchup of playoff-bound clubs on Sunday night.

The Capitals finished their trip with a 2-0 victory over the Arizona Coyotes at Glendale, Ariz., on Friday night with Vitek Vanecek stopping 19 shots to earn his fourth shutout of the season and the sixth of his career.

The game was somewhat of a grind for the Capitals, coming at the end of a long trip against a team that is out of playoff contention.

“I think our guys were muscling through (Friday),” Capitals coach Peter Laviolette said. “It’s the end of the road trip, 11 days, and you’re changing cities and you’re getting into cities late, and everything’s off a little bit. And so I thought it was a really gutsy effort to stay focused and stay with the effort that we needed to be successful.”

Forward Conor Sheary agreed.

“Yeah, at the end of a long road trip against a team that’s out of the playoffs, they’re trying to plug in some young guys,” said Sheary, who scored a goal and added an assist on Friday. “Sometimes those can be dangerous games. They did get some odd-man rushes, and Vitek made the saves when he needed to. But overall, it was a gritty win and a good job by us.”

Washington (44-23-11, 99 points) has lost both games with Toronto (51-21-7, 109 points) this season.

The Capitals have one more home game after playing Toronto and will end their regular season with two road games in New York.

The Capitals are 9-1-2 in their past 12 road games.

“There’s no rhyme or reason to it; I don’t know if we prepare differently or just approach games differently, but it seems like everyone buys in,” Sheary said. “We’re a veteran team, we’re not afraid to play on the road, and sometimes (with a) young team you are. I think we’ve just done a great job all year of that.”

The Maple Leafs will complete a three-game trip on Sunday. They lost 3-2 in overtime to the Florida Panthers on Saturday after losing 8-1 to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday.

Auston Matthews, who leads the NHL with 58 goals, returned to the Toronto lineup Saturday after missing three games with an undisclosed injury. Matthews was kept off the scoresheet but had some good chances to score.

Matthews suffered the injury in the win over the Ottawa Senators on April 16. The team did not elaborate other than to say the ailment was unrelated to the wrist injury that cost him the first three games of the season.

“Just an awkward collision,” Matthews said before the game on Saturday. “Nothing really too crazy. Put myself in a bit of an awkward spot that just caught me.

“I think it’s something you have to manage moving forward. We’ve got a good staff here. It’s something I can work through. We’ve done a really good job of helping it feel better and doing everything I can to work to improve different areas and just feel as good as I possibly can.”

Toronto lost Michael Bunting in the first period. He favored his right leg after falling behind Florida’s goal.

“He’s going to miss some time, for sure, but I don’t know how much,” Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said.

–Field Level Media

Florida suddenly is the hottest state on ice.

As the NHL regular season winds down, the Florida Panthers (57-15-6, 120 points) will host the Tampa Bay Lightning (48-22-8, 104 points) on Sunday night in Sunrise, Fla.

The Panthers set a franchise record Saturday with their 13th consecutive win, a 3-2 overtime victory vs. the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Tampa Bay cruised to a 6-2 win over the Nashville Predators on Saturday.

Both the Panthers and Lightning already have clinched playoff berths. The Lightning are the two-time reigning Stanley Cup champions, and the Panthers are atop the NHL standings this season.

No other state has two NHL playoff teams this season (sorry California, New York and Pennsylvania).

The Panthers are the league’s highest-scoring team. The Lightning reside in the top-eight in goals scored and goals allowed.

Florida has won two of its three matchups with Tampa Bay this season. Only one of those games was in Sunrise, and the Panthers rolled to a 9-3 rout in that game on Dec. 30.

Both teams are deep.

The Lightning have six players with at least 20 goals this season: captain Steven Stamkos (35), Brayden Point (27), Alex Killorn (25), Ross Colton (22), Nikita Kucherov (21) and defenseman Victor Hedman (20).

“Balanced scoring — it’s pivotal if you want to go anywhere in the playoffs,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “You need to have more than a couple of guys scoring. It’s a big reason for our success.”

The Panthers have seven 20-goal scorers, led by captain Aleksander Barkov (39). The others are Anthony Duclair (31), Jonathan Huberdeau (30), Sam Reinhart (29), Sam Bennett (27), Carter Verhaeghe (22) and Claude Giroux (21). Giroux, however, scored 18 of those while playing with the Philadelphia Flyers.

Huberdeau, who has 114 points, is trying to catch Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid (116) for the NHL scoring lead. Huberdeau already leads the NHL with 84 assists.

Huberdeau said he doesn’t monitor the scoring battle, but …

“My brother texts me all the time,” Huberdeau said. “He says, ‘McDavid got another one.’

“I tell him, ‘You can stop texting me. That’s fine.'”

Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, who got the win on Saturday, leads the NHL in wins with 39.

Tampa Bay star goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, who had the night off on Saturday, is 36-18-5 this season with a 2.46 goals-against average and a .917 save percentage.

The Lightning also have Brian Elliott, who won on Saturday to improve his record to 11-3-3.

“I love our (goalie) tandem,” Cooper said. “But if we’re not defending (well), it doesn’t matter who’s in net. The (goalies) can only do so much.

“If we’re going to do anything (in the playoffs), we have to look after our own end.”

Panthers interim coach Andrew Brunette said his team got a taste of what the postseason will be like in Saturday’s win over Toronto.

“It felt like a playoff game,” Brunette said. “It was a tight-checking game. It was fast-paced. Toronto played harder than we did. But the fact that we won speaks to the grit and resilience of our group.”

–Field Level Media

The Boston Bruins will look to keep pace in the Atlantic Division when they visit the Montreal Canadiens on Sunday night.

The Bruins (48-25-5, 101 points) are three points behind the Tampa Bay Lightning for third place in the division after posting a 3-1 triumph against the New York Rangers on Saturday. The win was Boston’s third in the team’s past four games following a three-game losing streak.

The Bruins were buoyed by the returns of forward David Pastrnak, defenseman Hampus Lindholm and goalie Linus Ullmark. Pastrnak had been sidelined eight games with an undisclosed injury, Lindholm missed seven games due to a lower-body ailment, and Ullmark sat out three with an undisclosed injury.

“This time of year is when you’re in the dog days, looking forward to the playoffs but still have to play games and play well … so it brings a littler bit of different energy in the room,” Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said. “It’s going to make a difference in your lineup. Other guys shift back down to where they’re best suited as well. Once you get the bump from them, you get guys back to their normal spots, and I just think it makes for a cleaner game.”

Pastrnak had a goal and an assist to reach 500 career points and bring his season total to 73 points, one shy of Brad Marchand for the team lead. Pastrnak is one goal away from reaching the 40-mark for the second time in his NHL career.

“It was nice that I was able to come back and help the team,” he said. “Obviously, it’s nice (to get 500 points). If you told me as a kid, I wouldn’t have believed you. I’m very humbled about it and happy.”

The Canadiens (20-48-11, 51 points) are coming off their eighth straight defeat with a 6-4 loss to the Ottawa Senators on Saturday. Montreal has been outscored 37-16 during its skid.

The Canadiens have allowed at least three goals in six of the seven losses and in 12 of their past 13 games overall.

“It (stinks) to lose,” forward Rem Pitlick said. “I think as a team, as an athlete, there is that fire and frustration when you lose. We’re (angry), but we’re just going to keep working. There’s nothing you can do other than try to keep getting better, and hopefully it bounces in your favor. We’re doing what we can do to control it.”

The scoring touch has been hard to come by this season for Brendan Gallagher, who is stuck at a career-low six goals in 53 games. The 29-year-old, who recorded consecutive 30-plus goal seasons in 2018-19 and 2019-20, brings a nine-game goal drought into Sunday’s contest and has tallied just twice in his past 34 games.

“I’m a process guy,” Gallagher said. “You continue to get those chances, continue to do the right things, they’ll go in. Maybe not this year, but they’ll go in. I haven’t lost belief in myself. I still know I’m capable of scoring goals, regardless of results. It’s just a matter of me understanding some areas to improve and some areas that are the bread and butter of my game that I need to continue to do.”

–Field Level Media

The Detroit Red Wings and New Jersey Devils used to have a lot in common when they were perennial Stanley Cup contenders in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Now, both teams have much in common in terms of futility, playing out the season and having nothing to gain except draft lottery balls going into their meeting on Sunday in Newark, N.J.

It will be the first of two meetings between the teams in Newark in a span of five days, as the teams will close the regular season against each other on Friday in the Prudential Center.

The Red Wings won the teams’ only previous meeting this season with a 5-2 victory on Detroit on Dec. 18.

Detroit (30-39-10, 70 points) enters having lost four of its last five games, with the most recent defeat being a 7-2 loss at home to Pittsburgh on Saturday in what was the squad’s home finale.

The Red Wings will hit the road for their last three games of the season knowing they will miss the playoffs for a sixth straight season.

They also will be without captain Dylan Larkin, who had season-ending core muscle surgery last week.

Despite the fact his team is sputtering into the offseason, Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill hopes his team finishes on a positive note.

“I think our guys have tried to do a good job of being above people,” Blashill said. “We haven’t had the puck enough, that’s for sure. Part of that is when you are undermanned a little bit, that is what happens. We’ve got to have things go our way. We have to defend great, we have to get great goaltending and we have to be super optimistic.”

Just like the Red Wings, New Jersey (27-43-8, 62 points) also enters having lost four out of its last five games.

New Jersey is coming off back-to-back home losses, first a 5-2 setback to Buffalo on Thursday and then a 3-2 overtime loss to Carolina on Saturday.

It was a tougher than usual loss to Carolina, given New Jersey held a 2-0 lead in the third period before allowing two goals in the final five minutes of regulation.

The defeat was just another learning experience for a younger Devils team that last made the playoffs in 2018.

“As hard as we worked and as much as we put into it, it’s a painful lesson,” New Jersey coach Lindy Ruff said. “A painful lesson about bringing pucks back, not taking care of it, the intensity to win a wall battle in those last three to four minutes. Mistakes that you are going to have to learn from and live through.”

The game will feature two of the NHL’s worst defensive teams.

Detroit enters having given up a 306 goals — second-most in the league behind Montreal’s 309 — on the season, while New Jersey is fourth-worst with 288 goals allowed.

–Field Level Media