Barry Trotz guides Islanders past his former Capitals club in 5 games

After Alex Ovechkin scored twice to help Washington avoid a sweep in Game 4, the Islanders’ team defense reasserted itself and the club won, 4-0, Thursday to capture the series at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. Semyon Varlamov made 21 saves for the shutout.

The Islanders will face Boston if Montreal beats Philadelphia, and the Flyers if top-seeded Philadelphia hangs on to defeat the Canadiens.

In Game 4, the Capitals had used their speed to open up skating lanes and their aggressiveness to wear down the Islanders, who have the oldest team in the playoffs with an average age just shy of 29.

“I know a lot about that core,” Trotz said. “There’s obviously some real strong character there. They weren’t going away.”

In the series-clinching game, Anthony Beauvillier scored two goals, his team-leading fifth and sixth since the start of the qualifying round. On his second goal, a brilliant individual effort in which he finished off an odd-man rush with Josh Bailey, Beauvillier was checked hard to the ice and skated slowly to the bench, but he returned for a regular shift.

The final two goals, from Nick Leddy and Bailey, came when the desperate Capitals lifted goaltender Braden Holtby for an extra attacker in the final minutes.

Ovechkin finished the five-game series with four goals, but he was blanked in three of those games. The Capitals couldn’t get scoring beyond their three stars, Ovechkin, T.J. Oshie and Evgeny Kuznetsov. The Islanders’ scoring was spread out among 10 players.

The Islanders are expecting a better playoff run after they were swept by the Carolina Hurricanes in the second round last season. The Islanders missed the postseason in 2018 under coach Doug Weight and in 2017 under Weight and Jack Capuano. The franchise hasn’t advanced to the conference final since 1993.

That he had the sixth-seeded Islanders ahead against a top-four seed in the East was clear validation for Trotz, a 21-year veteran and two-time coach of the year, over Washington’s Todd Reirden, a first-time NHL head coach.

But Trotz rejected the idea that he had an advantage over Reirden because he was coaching against his former team.

“They’ve made some changes in some of the things they do, just as we’ve done with the Islanders,” Trotz said. “We’ve been focusing on Islander style of play, Islander identity.”

A Montreal player got ejected for a hit from behind. A Philadelphia player faces suspension for a cross check to the face.

This is the classic Canadiens-Flyers series that history showed was coming. Don’t expect players to engage in an all-out brawl in warm-ups like Chris Chelios, Ron Hextall and teammates did during the 1987 playoffs, but Game 6 of this first-round series Friday will have plenty of hatred to spread around.

In Game 5, Canadiens forward Jesperi Kotkaniemi’s hit on Travis Sanheim led to some stitches and a major penalty and ejection. Philadelphia defenseman Matt Niskanen’s stick also got up in Brendan Gallagher’s face to the point he was bleeding from his mouth and needed more evaluation Thursday.

While the Flyers await word on Niskanen’s availability for Game 6 (7 p.m., NBC Sports Network), the Canadiens announced Gallagher will miss the rest of the series with a broken jaw that requires him to leave the Toronto bubble for surgery. It’s a big loss for Montreal; associate coach Kirk Muller called Gallagher “the heartbeat of our team.”