The Washington Capitals looked to bounce back after their regulation defeat in Philadelphia a few nights ago. To do so, they would need to take advantage of a further sliding New Jersey Devils team that has lost three in a row, giving up five goals on average in those three games.
Nico Hischier, Nikita Gusev, and Blake Coleman kicked things off with three unanswered goals for the Devils. Jakub Vrana, newly promoted to the power play, got the Caps off the snide in the second. Hischier’s second restored their three goal lead not long after. Miles Wood empty netter.
Devils beat Caps 5-1.
- The Devils are not good and the one player really keeping them in games of late, MacKenzie Blackwood, was not even playing tonight. That makes the Caps playing like they did in the first period annoy me more than usual. The starts to games of late have been embarrassing. Have let the first goal in, in eight of their last nine and 15 of their last 20.
- With that said, Braden Holtby needs to stop that first goal. Nico Hischier was never, ever going top shelf there. I’m very confused as to why he was so deep in his cage and seemed to try the pokecheck?
- The amount of BS no look, spin-o-rama type garbage from the Caps in the period also annoyed me. As you can clearly tell, I wasn’t a fan of the beginning of this game. Look your pass in and pass the puck to your teammates sticks. This isn’t peewee.
Torts: “there is no more overrated stat than plus-minus.” 😍
— Alison (@AlisonL) January 11, 2020
- The start of the second period was more of the same and that same is bad. I don’t know if I’m just particularly cranky tonight or if the Caps made me that way by playing like this of late. They were going to slump at some point, but man this isn’t fun to watch.
- Shorthanded goals allowed in back-to-back games now. This one created by Nicklas Backstrom not being good enough on the half wall. Backstrom overall felt uncharacteristically bad to me the whole game. Anyway, I really wish the Caps coaching staff would come up with something that doesn’t just involve a change in personnel. It just feels like lazy coaching to me.
- The amount of forced passes that would need to go through two or three Devils players to even come close to working out have given me a migraine.
- RIP, Neil Peart. Heard a lot of Rush in arena for this game.
https://twitter.com/friedgehnic/status/1216145417861324802?s=21
- Third period was good at evens. Too late though. I hate that they have Vrana in Kuznetsov’s old spot on the power play. That changes nothing.
- The first win for New Jersey in DC since December of 2016.
- Connor McMichael is right back on track in the OHL after winning gold for Canada. The Caps 2019 first round pick netted his fourth hat trick of the season against the Saginaw Spirit.
Navy! #JoeBSuitOfTheNight #CapsDevils pic.twitter.com/yzcbtPtnwC
— Ian Oland (@ianoland) January 12, 2020
The Caps have three in a row coming also against the Metro Division. It’d be nice to win a couple of those.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Devils
Headline photo: NBC Sports Washington
