Three games into the regular season, the Washington Capitals sit dead last in the Metropolitan Division with a 1-2-0 record. The Capitals have been out-scored by their opponents 12 to 4 and have trailed 122:42 of 185 possible minutes. They are one of two teams that have no power-play goals.
Fourteen of the team’s twenty skaters — including Evgeny Kuznetsov, Nicklas Backstrom, TJ Oshie, and Dylan Strome — have not registered a single point. Alex Ovechkin, 38, has no goals and gone two games without a shot on net for the first time in his career. Tom Wilson has more fights (2) than points (1). The Capitals’ likely future captain has more PIMs (18) than only four other players league wide — a very Oatesian statistic.
To say things aren’t working for the Capitals early would be an understatement. It’s been, as Spencer Carbery said after the Caps’ 4-0 shutout loss to the Penguins in their Home Opener, “the worst scripted start we possibly could have had.”
After the Capitals latest blowout loss, a 6-1 setback against a young and upcoming Ottawa Senators team on Wednesday night, Carbery was frank about what he thought was wrong.
Spencer Carbery: I thought the first period – I liked our game a lot. I thought it was probably our best 20 minutes of the season thus far. We’re down 2-1 but I didn’t think that was an issue from a score standpoint and being able to come back in the game. Then in the second period, um, sort of the microcosm of how the year is going for this group right now, is every mistake we make is ending up in the back of the net.
It’s more demoralizing the fact that — we’re really struggling from a stand point of we’ve got a lot of other guys looking to find their games early in the season and aren’t there.
So, okay. That’s fine. Usually it’s a few (guys), but we have more than you would call normal. So trying to find our game.
What’s compounding the issue, every time we make a mistake it’s in the back of the net. It’s tough. It’s hard. I don’t think it’s a lack of effort. We’re turning over some pucks that maybe in a different year or in a different situation that wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but right now, every time we turn over a puck, it’s going to be a Grade A (chance). We have to learn from that.
We’re struggling right now, we’re not executing well offensively, we’re not clicking like a well-oiled machine offensively. Power play, finishing chances, two-on-ones, it’s not clicking. They aren’t ending up in the back of the net.
So the problem with that is defensively you tighten, tighten, tighten, tighten to survive games. And that’s what we’re not doing. You have to really play a near perfect game in terms of your puck management and your defending, or else you’re going to have what you had tonight.
Carbery was then asked, moving forward, how the team improves.
Spencer Carbery: We’ve got to keep working at it. I know it’s not going to be a situation where our guys — we’ve got to stay upbeat and get some guys going here. We’ve got to get some guys going. We’re three games into the year. It’s still very, very early, but we have to get our group going individually, which well help give some line chemistry, help us generate momentum in games, it’ll help us be able to deploy a line that we know will be able to be reliable in this situation and be able to do this. Right now we don’t have that. So right now, we need to make sure, like I said before, we have to play tighter until we find our groove offensively and can make a play. Like you saw on the other side of the ice tonight. Until we get to that spot, we have to tighten up.
Early on, the Capitals have the fourth-worst PDO in the NHL (.958) suggesting they’ve been unlucky (if all the dings off the post and crossbar didn’t get that point across). They’re also going through a transition as an organization; a rethinking of how many things used to be.
After Peter Laviolette had the team play a more plodding system where they kept things mostly along the boards, the Capitals are opening things up and trying to play with more speed, creativity, and connectivity. There are new habits that need to be learned and old habits that need be broken. On top of that, the Capitals are integrating eight players 25 years old or younger and, as Alan May pointed out in the post-game show on Monumental Network, are still trying to find a new identity of how to win in the post-Laviolette Era.
“They have no physicality,” May said. “No speed. No defense.”
Three games are not a big sample size and a Saturday date against lowly Montreal could go a long way in getting the Capitals back on track. But this season, there was always going to be growing pains. The Caps are just feeling that big time right now.
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
