Home / Game Recap / Fucale’s fallible: Bruins beat Caps 7-3

Fucale’s fallible: Bruins beat Caps 7-3

By Peter Hassett

 2 Comments

January 10, 2022 9:47 pm

On Monday night, the Washington Capitals made a goal sandwich where the Caps goals were the bread and inside is a juicy meaty filling made from a billion Boston Bruins goals. Yeah, that’s a good intro. I’m not gonna rewrite that at all.

Conor Sheary scored twice in the first period, then Boston responded with SIX goals, chasing Zach Fucale and burning Vitek Vanecek right away. Under the advice of a physician, I will not not be recapping those goals here. TJ Oshie crashed the net to turn Ovechkin’s pass into a goal, but Marchand made it 7-2 on the rush. More meaningless hockey was played, growing less and less coherent until clarity arrived all at once with the final buzzer.

Caps lose.

  • Before we get into the bleakness, Conor Sheary had a great first period. Filling in for Carl Hagelin (on the COVID list) with Dowd and Hathaway, Sheary added finish to a strong possession line. Both his goals came off turnovers by Boston goalie Linus Ullmark in the slot.
  • Okay so Zach Fucale is not infallible. Good to know. He got lit up on two power-play goals in the first, then two even-strength opponent goals (his first ever) in the second period.
  • Then Vitek Vanecek made his first appearance in net since December 19, giving up a goal on his first shot faced.

  • The game started to turn when Washington got penalty-happy in the first period. They committed three minors (Kuznetsov, Dowd, Carlson) and probably received a favorable offsetting call (Bergeron). Boston punished Fucale on two of those power plays.
  • Man, the Caps’ finishing percentages — shooting and saving —  have really cratered in the last couple weeks. That can tend to make even just-okay things look abysmal. Like, the Caps gave Boston too many tasty rush chances in this game, but also a Caps goalie should hypothetically be able to stop more than zero of them.
  • Anyway, that’s four L‘s in a row. Not great.

Okay, that was a stinker.

For no apparent reason I can determine, the Caps will now have four days off before playing on Long Island. Hopefully in that time they can get healthy, fix the power play, overhaul goaltending, and adopt the Weagle as their primary logo.

Headline image: NBC Sports Washington

, ,