WASHINGTON -- The schedule sent the Washington Capitals a tired, banged-up opponent as an early Christmas present.

They didn't squander it.

Defenseman John Carlson scored twice in the first period and Braden Holtby stopped 23 shots as the Capitals rolled to a 4-0 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning Friday night at Verizon Center.

Marcus Johansson had a goal and an assist and Alex Ovechkin also scored for Washington (20-8-4), which had lost two straight, the last via shootout. Nicklas Backstrom had two assists.

"I thought we stayed aggressive, especially in the first period," Backstrom said. "We kept it pretty simple, we worked hard. We knew they played last night and they traveled too."

Holtby picked up his third shutout of the season and 26th career as Washington and Tampa Bay played their final game before the Christmas break.

"Obviously we were disappointed after last game, we only got one point, we wanted to feel good about ourselves before the Christmas break," Backstrom said. "That's what we did, a 60-minute good game."

The Capitals improved to 18-0-0 when they score three or more goals.

Playing the second of back-to-backs after beating St. Louis 5-2 at home Thursday night, Tampa Bay (17-15-3) got to their hotel around 3 a.m. Friday morning. They struggled from the outset as they trailed before the game was a minute old and didn't mount a real attack on Holtby until the second period.

"As ugly as it looks, they did all their damage in the first (15) minutes, and that kind of changed the game," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said.

Already missing several players, Tampa Bay lost defenseman Braydon Coburn and left winger Jonathan Drouin during the game. Cooper said both players are being evaluated.

"It's been the tale of our December, guys getting hurt so you're just hoping nobody else was going to," Cooper said. "It's tough to end, going into the Christmas break like this because we really made some positive strides in the past three weeks."

It was one of those nights for Tampa Bay. Johansson was called for goaltender interference at 6:25 of the third period. The Lightning mounted little offense on the power play, and when he left the box, Johansson quickly took a cross-ice pass from Backstrom and scored his 13th of the season to make it 4-0.

That was all for Andrei Vasilevskiy (20 saves) as goalie Kristers Gudlevskis made his season debut after being called up this week following an injury to Ben Bishop.

Carlson scored twice in the first period and Tampa Bay, looking every bit like a team that played the night before, managed just two shots on goal and none during two power plays.

It was 1-0 just 55 seconds in after Carlson's shot from the point deflected in off Vasilevskiy's glove.

"It something we talked about, wanting a good start," Carlson said of the early goal. "It's huge, it gets everybody into it right away..."

At 15:42 of the period, Carlson struck again. This time, he blasted a one-timer past Vasilevskiy from the top of the right circle off a feed from Johansson behind the end line. It was his third goal of the season.

"We just didn't come prepared," Tampa Bay's Alex Killorn said. "To go down 2-0 to a team like that, it's going to be tough to come back, especially when they're playing as well as they are."

The Lightning put a flurry of shots on Holtby to open the second period, but nothing got through.

"We were hard on their D, finished our checks," Holtby said. "A couple of their D-men were in and out of the game and they were already short-handed so I thought we did a really good job of that and you could tell it kind of took the wind out of their sails a bit."

Midway through the second period, Dmitri Orlov flipped the puck down the ice from the Washington end. Ovechkin got behind the defense, gathered in the puck and came in on a breakaway. He deked and then backhanded the puck home for his 15th goal of the season to make it 3-0.

NOTES: Tampa Bay LW Ondrej Palat missed his fifth consecutive game with an undisclosed injury and C Cedric Paquette (lower body) sat out his second straight contest. C Vladislav Namestnikov (illness) also was a scratch. ... With three assists on Thursday, D Victor Hedman (258 points) moved into ninth place on Tampa Bay's all-time scoring list. ... Washington captain Alex Ovechkin has scored more points against Tampa Bay than any NHL franchise except Atlanta/Winnipeg. ... The Capitals are third in the NHL in goals-against average. ... Washington's scratches included D Nate Schmidt, LW Daniel Winnik and LW Zach Sanford. ... The Lightning resume play Wednesday when they host the Montreal Canadiens. The Capitals play the New York Islanders in Brooklyn on Tuesday.