Pierre-Luc Dubois, Rasmus Sandin and Taylor Raddysh each scored a goal and added an assist in the Washington Capitals 6-5 win over the New Jersey Devils in a meeting featuring the top two teams in the Metropolitan Division on Saturday night.

A quirk of the New Jersey Devils’ season has been that, until tonight, they had not lost a game in which they scored a goal since October 25th, a 4-3 overtime loss to the New York Islanders. The four losses they suffered in that span were all shutout defeats.

They did it again, these Washington Capitals, who ideally would like to lead from start to finish every once in a while but are proving they have no issue doing things the hard way — or even the really hard way.

Down two entering the third period, the Capitals beat the Islanders, 5-4 in overtime, for their ninth come-from-behind victory of the season.

Rather, the latest third-period implosion, which led to a 5-4 overtime loss to the Capitals, put into a starker reality that the Islanders are not merely behind the league’s typical Cup contenders, but another club that has been accused of hanging onto a core too long — and this without the injured Alex Ovechkin on the ice.