Photo: Glenn James
What were your expectations for Saturday’s Caps game? Seriously, I want to know. Two games in as many nights, a deflating loss against the league’s most winning team on night one, a backup goalie in night two facing one of the fastest improving teams– I can think of lots of reasons this one could have gone really badly, but here’s how it really went:
Badly, at first at least. Tyler Seguin scored a power-play goal after Brooks Orpik blew his assignment on Jason Spezza, then Erik Cole got a deflection in front of Justin Peters to make it 2-0 going into intermission.
Spezza converted a three-on-one before the Caps finally woke up. Eric Fehr responded with a goal assisted by Joel Ward, then Andre Burakovsky put a zipper of a shot behind Kari Lehtonen. Alex Ovechkin converted a breakaway to tie the game early in the third period, but then the wheels came off.
Within twenty seconds, Antoine Roussel and Jamie Benn scored– the former with a lucky bounce and a layup, the latter with a rush goal against a slower defense.
Nick Backstrom got a one-timer off a brilliant pass from Alex Ovechkin in the final four minutes to make it a one-goal game. The Caps had some fireworks in the final ticks, but couldn’t hit the back of the net.
Stars beat Caps 5-4.
Joe B suit of the night
The Caps have now lost all but one of the games of they’ve played on the second half of back-to-backs this season. I don’t know if that’s meaningful, but it’s a bummer to me.
It’s not like the Caps were bad tonight– not in the big picture at least. They attacked the Stars more often than they got attacked, but for whatever reason the Stars were much more potent. Was it exhaustion? Lack of speed? Isolated mistakes? I don’t know, and I don’t wanna make excuses.
I don’t hate the way the Caps played this weekend; I just hate the way the games worked out.
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