Cal Clutterbuck and Ladd scored 1:39 apart midway through the third period to lift the Islanders over Vancouver 4-2 on Monday night, giving the Canucks their ninth straight loss.

Chimera and Nikolay Kulemin also scored and Jaroslav Halak stopped 30 shots to help the Islanders improve to 2-3-2 in their last seven.

”We had a little bit of puck luck tonight,” New York coach Jack Capuano said. ”The last few games we played well, we just haven’t got results. It’s good for the guys to get that feeling.”

Ladd and Chimera, New York’s top free agent signings in the offseason, had combined for just four assists through the first 12 games.

”It’s great for me and Jason, just getting that good feeling to put a couple of pucks in the net,” Ladd said. ”Sometimes all it just takes is one and build off from there.”

Daniel Sedin and Markus Granlund scored, and Ryan Miller had 28 saves for Vancouver, which fell to 0-8-1 with eight straight regulation losses since opening the season with four wins.

”It’s tough. We need some good results,” Canucks coach Willie Desjardins said. ”It’s nice we got the first (goal) tonight, it’s been a long time since that’s happened. … We got one on the power play, and that hadn’t happened in a while, either. … We didn’t take it away in the third like we needed to.”

The Bruins beat the Sabres 4-0, with Tuukka Rask rebounding from his first loss with 32 saves for his second shutout, and Brad Marchand and David Krejci scored power-play goals in the second period.

David Pastrnak had a power-play goal and Riley Nash scored for the Bruins, who won for the fourth time in five games. Rask recorded his 32nd career shutout after losing 5-2 against the New York Rangers on Saturday. He improved to 7-1 this season.

At Sunrise, Florida, Reilly Smith scored a tiebreaking goal with 4:28 left, Roberto Luongo made 34 saves and the Panthers beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-1.

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Yet here they are, postseason-bound with two games to spare, quite the achievement for Alex Ovechkin and first-year coach Adam Oates. Tuesday night’s 5-3 win over the Winnipeg Jets clinched the Southeast Division for the Capitals, who were next-to-last in the Eastern Conference as recently as March 21.

“I remember 20 games ago looking at the schedule,” said Mathieu Perreault, one of five Capitals to score a goal Tuesday. “Like, ‘Man, we’re probably going to have to go 16-4 to get in’ — and basically did it. It almost looked impossible if you look back 20 games, but this team has got so much character, and they found a way to do it.”

If the Capitals win their final two, they will indeed finish with 16 wins in 20 games, but that would be gravy at this point. They’re in the playoffs for the sixth consecutive season, a run that includes five Southeast titles. As a bonus, they will leapfrog several teams with better records and enter the playoffs as the conference’s No. 3 seed for winning their division, even if it is the weakest division in the NHL.

“We had a lousy start,” Oates said. “And I don’t think many of us thought we would come this far. But we obviously put some really good hockey together, and the guys have grown and it’s obviously a good feeling right now.”

The Capitals blew a two-goal lead, survived a pair of replay reviews and exhaled deeply when defensemen John Erskine cleared two shots off the goal line. They also had to kill off a power play with a one-goal lead late in the game, but they held to win for the 10th time in 11 games.

Ovechkin scored his league-leading 31st goal — an empty-netter in the final minute — and Matt Hendricks, Jason Chimera and Nicklas Backstrom also scored. Braden Holtby made 24 saves for the Capitals.

The loss keeps the Jets in ninth place in the East, one spot away from the playoffs but with slim chances of moving up because they have only one game remaining. They trail the New York Rangers and Ottawa Senators by one point, but the Rangers have two games left and the Senators have three.

“It was basically our Game 7 in the playoffs,” said Nik Antropov, who scored Winnipeg’s third goal. “And it’s frustrating to lose that way.”

Evander Kane and Blake Wheeler also scored for the Jets, who had won six of seven but were playing the second half of a road back-to-back after beating the Buffalo Sabres on Monday.

“We played too cute,” Winnipeg coach Claude Noel said. “There was no way we were going to be able to match their skill level and to play the way that they played. We had to do some things that to me that we didn’t do.”

Hendricks and Chimera gave the Capitals a 2-0 lead after the first period, but the score would have been tied if not for Erskine, who cleared Bryan Little’s shot off the line when Holtby was caught out of position and later arrived just in time to get his stick on a bouncing puck that had dribbled down the goaltender’s back on a tip by Aaron Gagnon. The puck was some 90 percent across the line — but not all the way, and the no-goal call was upheld by video review.

“He’s our third goalie right now,” Ovechkin said with a smile.

The Jets did pull even in the second period when Kane and Wheeler scored, but it took just 37 seconds for the Capitals to regain the lead when Backstrom’s right skate neatly redirected a centering pass from Ovechkin. The replay review determined that Backstrom didn’t use a deliberate kicking motion, and the goal was upheld.

Perreault doubled the lead by putting in a rebound late in the second period, but Antropov beat Holtby stick-side with 8:10 remaining in the third to pull the Jets within one.

Perrault was whistled for high sticking with 5:16 remaining, but the Capitals killed off the penalty without allowing a shot. Ovechkin capped the celebration with the empty-netter, prompting chants of “M-V-P!” throughout the sold-out arena.

“The way we started, there were a lot of doubters,” Hendricks said. “Our fans were against us a little bit, the media was hard on us a little bit. But we came and did what we set out to do.”

Game notes

Antropov returned after missing eight games with a lower body injury. Jets F Kyle Wellwood was out with a significant injury to his right hand from blocking a shot during Monday’s win at Buffalo. … Ovechkin set an NHL record with his goal, although it’s one that probably deserves an asterisk. It was his 13th in the month of April, an accomplishment made easier because the lockout-modified schedule is extending the regular season deeper into the month than usual. The previous record of 12 was set by Mario Lemieux in 1993 and tied by Winnipeg’s Alex Zhamnov in 1995.

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Buffalo Sabres at Washington Capitals
When: 3:00 PM ET, Sunday, January 27, 2013
Where: Verizon Center, Washington, District Of Columbia
TV: 3 p.m., NHL Network (U.S.), MSG, Comcast Sportsnet D.C.
Prediction: Sabres 4, Capitals 1

Oddsmakers currently have the Capitals listed as 116-moneyline favorites versus the Sabres, while the game’s total is sitting at 5½.

Vanek has four points and five assists in his last eight games against Washington. Cody Hodgson has three goals to start the season after finishing with three in 20 games for Buffalo in 2011-12. Offseason acquisition Steve Ott, who scored in the season opener against Philadelphia, leads the team with 21 hits. Tyler Ennis, who finished last season with 24 points in 22 games, has one assist so far this season and is minus-3.

Last time out for Buffalo, they were a 3-1 loser as they battled the Hurricanes at home. Moneyline bettors who got the Hurricanes at +140 were rewarded, while the 4 combined goals moved the game UNDER for totals bettors.

Team record: 0-3-1 SU, ATS
Current streak: lost 4 straight games.
is 5-1 SU in its last 6 games when playing at home against Buffalo
The total has gone OVER in 4 of last 5 games when playing Buffalo
The total has gone OVER in 4 of last 5 games when playing at home against Buffalo
The total has gone UNDER in 4 of last 6 games
When playing on Sunday are 5-5
Before playing Calgary are 3-7
After playing New Jersey are 4-6
After a loss are 7-3

Joel Ward, who scored six goals in 73 games last season, has two in his first four games this season. Goaltenders Braden Holtby and Michal Neuvirth have two starts apiece this season. Neuvirth has a 3.37 goals-against average and .877 save percentage, which is better than Holtby’s 5.04 GAA and .863 save percentage. Jason Chimera, who set a career-high with 20 goals and 39 points last season, has two assists – but he leads the team with 11 hits and is plus-1 this season.

Last time out for Washington, they were a 3-2 loser as they battled the Devils on the road. Moneyline bettors who got the Devils at -158 were rewarded, while the 5 combined goals moved the game UNDER for totals bettors.

Team record: 2-2-0 SU, ATS
Current streak: lost 2 straight games.
The total has gone OVER in 4 of last 5 games when playing Washington
The total has gone OVER in 4 of last 5 games when playing on the road against Washington
The total has gone OVER in 7 of last 10 games
The total has gone OVER in 4 of last 6 games on the road
When playing on Sunday are 8-2
Before playing Colorado are 8-2
After playing Carolina are 5-5
After a loss are 6-4

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