The Washington Capitals have started 2024 on the wrong foot. In the six games since returning from the holiday break, Washington has gone 1-4-1 and allowed a whopping 27 goals. While the Caps struggle to keep pucks out of their net, they have done little better at the other end of the rink, scoring just 13 times in that six-game span. Frustration in the locker room continues to bubble up as the team’s record worsens.
That pattern continued Friday night against the Carolina Hurricanes: the Capitals allowed six unanswered goals to turn a 2-0 lead into a 6-2 defeat. Head coach Spencer Carbery did not mince words in his postgame press conference, offering little praise even for the early success his team eked out before Carolina’s offensive onslaught.
“I didn’t think it was close the entire game,” he said. “Even though we had the two nothing lead, I mean, it never felt comfortable. It never felt like we had any momentum in that game other than on the scoreboard. So we knew we were in a really difficult spot and couldn’t flip it.”
The numbers bore out Carbery’s assessment. At five-on-five, Washington earned just over 30 percent of scoring chances and recorded a measly four high-danger opportunities compared to Carolina’s 11, per Natural Stat Trick. Even in a first period that saw them score twice and keep the Canes off the scoresheet, the Capitals got outshot 10-4 and out-chanced 14-3 at even strength.
After Carolina scored twice to tie the game at two, a pair of bad penalties in the third ultimately sunk the Capitals’ night beyond repair. Beck Malenstyn took a slashing call with 7:47 left in the period and Andrei Svechnikov scored on the ensuing man advantage to give Carolina the lead. During the Canes’ goal celebration, a frustrated Evgeny Kuznetsov proceeded to slash Michael Bunting in the leg to put the Caps a man down again. Brent Burns scored less than ninety seconds later, effectively sealing the deal for Carolina.
The Hurricanes’ power play ranks fourth in the NHL, making Washington’s lack of discipline even more disappointing. Nic Dowd spoke on the impact of those back-to-back calls after the loss.
“That hurts,” he said. “I think obvious penalties at any point in the game are. [They] put their five best guys on the ice, right? [We] put our five best guys on the ice and look what happened tonight as well. It’s tough, but I think we’ve done a good job as a whole. But anytime you put yourself in that situation with penalties, it can get challenging. Just like every night, right? We lean on something every night. We needed a couple kills, we didn’t get them. And that changed the game.”
When asked about the third period calls, Carbery began to answer before cutting himself off, lambasting his team for allowing the Hurricanes to take control of the game in the first place.
“Yeah, I mean obviously, they score on Mal’s and then—it’s irrelevant to me,” he said. “To me it’s irrelevant because we have no business being in that situation so that the game is so lopsided. And yeah, they capitalize, but it’s inevitable in those spots when you’re playing on your heels like that.”
John Carlson, who notched his 500th NHL assist on Dylan Strome’s goal, pointed to the Capitals’ failure to turn key plays in their favor as a major factor in both their loss on Friday and their recent skid as a whole.
“Whether we’ve got our A stuff and we’re dominating, or we’re playing okay, or we’re playing terrible, we’ve got to find a way to garner momentum,” he explained. “It seems like we just come up short every time on those big plays, whether it’s the kill there to keep it out of our net there at the end or finding something earlier than that going the other way. Those are big moments in the game; it doesn’t seem like we’ve captured too many of them and it’s made every game a grind right to the end, even when we’re playing decent and winning games.”
Strome offered credit to the Hurricanes’ strong play while highlighting the Caps’ inability to respond.
“Tonight they just smothered us,” he said. “It felt like every time we got the puck to the neutral zone, they were just on top of us. And when they were breaking it out, they were just rimming it and getting it past our D. And we couldn’t really do the same to them when they were dumping it on us.
“So, they play a style of play that works for them and it’s hard to play against. So credit to them, they played a solid game and they played their style.”
The Capitals have dropped two points out of a wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference and are now tied for sixth place in the Metropolitan Division without the games-in-hand advantage they held for much of the season. While losses are piling up, the Caps will have no respite as they enter a crucial stretch of their schedule.
Carlson noted that Friday night’s defeat eerily reflected the mistakes made in Wednesday night’s 6-3 loss against the New Jersey Devils.
“It’s kind of similar–not exactly the same, but just game flow-wise–to the last game,” he said. “That’s what makes it frustrating, is not only did we talk about it, did we go over it, did we make a point about it, it happened again.”
After a day of practice on Saturday, the Capitals will host the Los Angeles Kings on Sunday. In that game, Carbery hopes to see more from his team as they try and turn things around.
“We’re going to get to work on getting better collectively and individually,” he said. “We’ve got to get to work. We’ve got a lot of growing to do.”
Screenshot: @Capitals/X
