The Washington Capitals are coming home after a troubled, early-season road trip through Canada that found them sick, injured, and tired. Hoping to take a win in their last of three games, the Caps instead got stymied by the Calgary Flames, who dominated play and generated chances.
The Caps survived a scoreless first, but early in the second Michael Ferland dropped a pass to Brett Kulak and then redirected his shot for a goal. The Flames failed a clear early in the third, and Jakub Vrana turned that into a tying goal. Calgary got the lead back courtesy of Johnny Goudreau, who undressed Dmitry Orlov and set up Sean Monahan perfectly on a play entirely of his devising.
Flames beat Caps 2-1.
- Nathan Walker didn’t play despite his boil-over play, flat out like a lizard drinking. Crikey. Also, Aaron Ness got a sweater instead of Chorney, which got me thinking: what if we reorganized these deck chairs to better accentuate the iceberg shards that are all spilled about?
- Philipp Grubauer got the start, and he sure was busy. He was forced to make some big saves early, and he saw a startling volume of shots. The ones that went in – a redirect and a weak-side layup – I’m not sure any goalie could have saved those. And besides, Grubauer faced 38 shots, which is an indication of failure on the 190 feet in front of him or just a tired team on the back half of a back-to-back. Regardless: a respectable outing from an underappreciated backstop.
- Here’s Troy Brouwer ringing the post in the second period, in what would have been the motif of all of my fever dreams until April.
Troy Brouwer unleashed his #BrouwerPouwer on his former team, but the pipe said no @tjyoshie77 pic.twitter.com/HgSNsu4w0q
— Ian Oland (@ianoland) October 30, 2017
- After a sterling outing in Edmonton, the Alex Ovechkin line went back to its old ways of getting caved in. The Orpik/Bowey pairing was possession poison. The Caps got most of their offense out of the Backstrom line.
- The Caps got zero power plays in their stirring win on Saturday, but the momentum shifted in Calgary. Surprisingly, it was Brooks Orpik who drew two penalties, both trips, in the first period. The Caps failed to convert on five shots on those two PPs.
- On the self-discipline beat, the Caps stayed out of the box until halfway through the third, when Lars Eller committed a slash in the Flames’ zone and the Caps goofed up a line change. It was good while it lasted. Eller is certainly on a penalty jag that needs to stop.
#JoeBSuitOfTheNight #CapsFlames pic.twitter.com/Mgou0OevKS
— Ian Oland (@ianoland) October 30, 2017
Maybe come spring we’ll look back on this road trip as a miserable but fleeting blip – a moment when the Caps were beat up and roster-thin, before they eventually got it together and played like they oughta. I sure hope so. Aside from some good stuff in Edmonton, this was a ghastly long weekend for Washington.
