The Washington Capitals suffered their most lopsided defeat of the season on Monday. The Caps fell to the Arizona Coyotes 6-0 after giving up five goals in a historically ugly first period. Capitals starting goaltender Darcy Kuemper surrendered three goals on five shots before yielding the net to Charlie Lindgren, who saw two of the first three shots he faced go in.
The loss marked the fifth time in 22 games the Capitals have been shutout this season and the second time in their last six games. They were also clean-sheat’d by the Edmonton Oilers 5-0 on Black Friday.
After the deflating loss in Tempe, Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery did his best to explain what he saw and how his team will rebound.
“Believe it or not, I didn’t mind our start,” Carbery said in the locker room. “I mean, they just score on everything. I knew right away. Kuemps looked a little bit off so then you’re on guard there and hoping that it can stop the bleeding, but once that third (goal) goes in, their power play was really good, slinging it around. Puck movement on the tape, everything clean. Then it got out of hand.
“If you go down a checklist of areas of the game where goaltending, special (teams), like everything, we get severely, severely outplayed,” Carbery said. “Just go down (the list) right. Special teams, power play, penalty kill. Their power play’s on point. Ours isn’t. Penalty kill gives up (goals). Theirs doesn’t. We can’t find a way — like this is for a whole different thing of just scoring five-on-five. Just can’t finish and obviously goaltending, Connor Ingram plays excellent and gets a shutout.”
The Capitals scored only nine goals during the five-game road trip. If you ignore their five-goal outing against the Anaheim Ducks, the Capitals could only muster one goal per game. Carbery was asked if he saw anything from the games that gave him hope that the team is getting closer to how he wants them to play.
“Yes and no,” Carbery said. “There’s points where we control play and we do some good things in the offensive zone. We just really gotta get to work and work with our skill development and work with our individual players on creating separation and being able to make a play out of pressure. Even odd-man rush execution, tape to tape plays, little small area plays in tight areas. Like all that stuff, we just have to get to work as an organization on developing that and working with our players on that.”
Carbery then gave credit to the Coyotes skill plays during the game, which quickly led to things getting out of hand.
“Like the most evident (thing for our growth) is when I watch [Arizona’s] power play,” Carbery said. “When I watch those guys move that puck around and the way they make those small area plays, four-foot sauce here, five-foot sauce here, cross-ice sauce here, that’s where it becomes really evident of where we need to get caught up on playmaking to create scoring. And I know that’s something on the power play but I think all that stuff translates five-on-five as well.”
The Capitals will return home Tuesday afternoon and try to regroup as the Dallas Stars will be waiting for them at Capital One Arena on Thursday night.
“We’ve got to find some solutions and it won’t be a lack of effort,” Carbery said. “Our group will continue to work, continue to try, and we’ll get to work on finding ways to get better.”
Screenshot courtesy of Capitals
