OTTAWA -- No team is putting the puck in the net as often as the Washington Capitals of late, as they arrived at Canadian Tire Centre with 24 goals in their previous four games.

Cooling them off on Tuesday was Mike Condon and the Ottawa Senators' defensive system and its best.

Condon stopped 31 shots for his fourth shutout of the season as the Senators blanked the Capitals 3-0 in the third meeting of the teams this month.

"It's just good collective success," Condon said after his 14th consecutive start. He improved his record to 14-7-3 while filling in as starter for Craig Anderson. "We play a tight defensive game. We really frustrate teams, and our penalty kill has been coming up huge. Take care of those things and you kind of get the results you want."

"We're just sticking to it and not asking many questions about it."

The Capitals (32-10-6) failed in a bid to tie a franchise record by picking up a point 15 games in a row.

"We've had a pretty good run," Capitals coach Barry Trotz said. "So we'll have to start a new one."

Chris Kelly, with a short-handed effort, and Bobby Ryan scored before the first period was five minutes old. Zack Smith added a power-play marker in the second for the Senators, who lost 2-1 and 1-0 to Washington in the first week of January.

The Capitals were playing for the second time in two nights after defeating Carolina 6-1 in Washington on Monday.

At times, it looked as if the schedule caught up to them.

"Maybe a little bit mentally," Washington defenseman Karl Alzner said. "I think the guys actually felt better going into this game than last game, believe it or not. A lot of guys were saying they were tired last game, and we still found a way.

"You've got to kind of tip your cap. I think it's one of those games where you say good job to the Senators and be better next game."

With Braden Holtby given a night off in the Capitals net, Philipp Grubauer stepped in and stopped 31 shots. Grubauer was 7-0-2 in his previous nine starts.

"Three tips," he said of the Ottawa goals. "If that's the only way they can beat me, so be it. I don't want to get beat on clean shots, but I've got to make a stop on that first one.

"It's a tough start. It put us back there, one behind on the first shot. That was a slow game today. I don't think we got into it too much."

The Senators (26-15-5) have endured what Condon referred to as a "daunting" schedule in January, with a pair against the Columbus Blue Jackets, two against the Toronto Maple Leafs and meetings with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Edmonton Oilers and St Louis Blues to go along with their three against Washington.

So far this month, they own a 6-3-1 record.

"We've been working really well with momentum, using that when we beat the top teams in the league, and keep rolling from there," Smith said. "Like we've been saying for the last little while now, if you want to be the best, you've got to beat the best, and we've been doing that with some of the best teams in the league."

Senators coach Guy Boucher looked at this game as a final hurdle, the only top team his club had not overcome.

"We felt that the two previous games (against Washington), especially the 2-1 game, we had so many scoring chances and their goaltender had been unbelievable," Boucher said. "We felt we were playing good enough to win.

"This is a terrific team that's basically got no flaws. They've been killing everybody lately. We knew what we were up against."

Trotz, meanwhile, figured his troops weren't at their best. Especially on the power play, which went 0-for-6.

"I don't want to take anything away from them, (but) we dug ourselves an early hole and then I thought every time we got some momentum, we took an untimely penalty," he said. "I didn't think we had a lot of juice. From my standpoint, I can tell when we have juice on the bench and when we don't. We looked like a little bit of a tired hockey team.

"Sometimes it's not the night before, it's the games mounting up. I'm going to put that on that a little bit because we've had a pretty good run against some really good teams. We just weren't as sharp, and it showed on our bench. We weren't able to generate. Give them credit, they did some good things. We needed something to give us a spark, and we never really got that spark."

NOTES: Senators LW Mike Hoffman missed the game due to an illness. Hoffman, who was tied for the team lead in goals with 17, has scored seven times in his past seven games ... Senators C Casey Bailey was recalled from AHL Binghamton earlier in the day and replaced Hoffman in the lineup. It was his fifth NHL game of the season ... Senators scratched D Mark Borowiecki (flu) for the fourth game and C Tommy Wingels, who was acquired in a trade with San Jose earlier in the day ... Capitals C Jay Beagle missed his first game of the season with an illness. Replacing him in the lineup was C Chandler Stephenson, who recalled from Hershey to play his first NHL game of the season and 10th of his career ... Capitals D John Carlson missed his fifth game with a lower-body injury.