The Washington Capitals had a rough start to their five-game road trip on Monday with a 2-1 loss against the league-worst San Jose Sharks. Just days after their dismal 5-0 showing against the Edmonton Oilers, Washington failed to beat a bottom-five team for the second straight game.
Though Monday’s game saw stronger play and plenty of good opportunities for the Caps, the near-win rang hollow as the team mulled over the loss.
“I felt like we did a lot of good things, and a couple pucks that just go their way or I think it’s probably our game,” Tom Wilson said postgame. “It’s tough to swallow when you feel like you played probably good enough to win, but we’ve got to find a way to get done.”
“That’s the game of hockey: sometimes it’s just not going to go your way,” Connor McMichael noted. “I think for the most part we played a pretty good game tonight. We were pretty well structured. I thought the power play generated a lot of chances as well and we just couldn’t put it in.”
To head coach Spencer Carbery, the game bore an ominous resemblance to the team’s start of the season as they once again found themselves losing despite putting up strong moment-to-moment play.
“Did a lot of good things, but just felt eerily similar to the start of the year, where (we’re) just not able to make that last play or find that last goal to be able to break through and score maybe three or four in a game,” he said. “We’re searching for two, so it makes it tough to win games just scoring one goal.”
Like Carbery, McMichael saw echoes of similar losses after Monday night’s defeat.
“I think there’s been a lot of games throughout the year where they’re one-goal games and we just can’t seem to find the back of the net,” he said. “Tonight I think we out-chanced them pretty heavily. We had a lot of great looks. We just couldn’t put the puck in the net.”
The Capitals’ offensive woes were on full display Monday night. Even when winning, Washington has struggled to score this season: they’ve allowed the third-fewest goals in the NHL this season but have also scored the second-fewest. Without an offensive spark, the prospect of a comeback victory against San Jose became near-impossible.
“We have to just find a way to break through,” Carbery said. “For whatever reason, we just haven’t hit our stride offensively. No one in our lineup and our top six are really clicking to be able to finish. And it’s tough to win in this league when you don’t make that last play or can get two or three goals a night from different guys that can capitalize or beat a goalie clean. It’s really tough.”
Though Evgeny Kuznetsov scored in the second to neutralize the Sharks’ first lead of the night, Luke Kunin’s 2-1 power play tally in the third period proved the game-winner. The Capitals’ penalty kill–which had staved off 23-straight penalties earlier in the season–once again appeared mortal with their fourth allowed goal in two games.
“It’s tough in the third period when you’re killing,” Wilson said. “We killed most of the penalty and they just got a quick shot off at the end of that last one and made it count, and that’s the game.
For a team that controlled play for large parts of the night, the late-game collapse was particularly frustrating. Still, Evgeny Kuznetsov found optimism in the unsuccessful comeback.
“I felt like after they got couple of breakaways in the second, we turned the game around and had the push, and unfortunately [gave away] one and was unable to come back in the six-on-five,” he said of the loss. “But we did a lot of good things tonight and I think we can take a lot of good stuff and just see what was wrong and fix that for the next game.”
The Capitals have a day off on Tuesday to absorb those lessons before facing a 13-3-3 LA Kings squad Wednesday night.
Headline photo: Katie Adler/RMNB
