After falling to the Ottawa Senators 3-2 in overtime on Sunday, the Washington Capitals lost their sixth-straight game, netting them only two standings points out of a possible 12 during that stretch. The L’s dropped the Capitals out of a playoff spot with only five games remaining in the season.
For Capitals’ head coach Spencer Carbery, the losing is due to a lack of execution, consistency, and killer instinct. Carbery is relying on young players who are still learning how to win at the NHL level in real time to get the job done. During big moments, the bench boss turns to the team’s veteran players for heavy minutes and as a result, they are being overtaxed, making uncharacteristic mistakes, and poor decisions.
The two issues are occurring simultaneously and combining for a heartbreaking result.
“I feel like at certain points of a game we’re really struggling to find our way through momentum shifts, we mismanage pucks at odd situations and you just can’t this time of year,” Carbery said after losing to the Senators. “I think when you peel it back, you can even go back to Carolina and you look at these games, I think a lot of it is just to me, a product of two things: 1) we have young players playing at the end of the year, the intensity level is ratcheted up, the speed of the game is ratcheted up, and now the importance of the game is ratcheted up, right? So now your season is on the line and you can just see we’re gripping the stick, making really poor decisions that are snowballing and I’ll probably go back through it, and there are 25 to 30 that are just head-scratchers and you’re like [ugh]. That’s a part of it.
“Then, I think for some of our veteran guys, too, they’re a little bit, because they’re having to shoulder so much of the responsibility now, they’ve become overwhelmed,” Carbery added. “And now they start to do things that are uncharacteristic. Going through this stretch, there’s not a lot of games I go through where there’s structure things. It’s a lot of individual puck plays at just really, really difficult times where you just can’t make those mistakes this time of year.”
The losing streak began with a 5-1 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on March 28. Since then, Washington has lost to the Boston Bruins (3-2 SO), Buffalo Sabres (6-2), Pittsburgh Penguins (4-1), Carolina Hurricanes (4-2), and Senators (3-2 OT). Their goals differential is minus-14 during thos games.
The Capitals, at five-on-five, are seeing just 42 percent of the shot attempts, 42.7 percent of the expected goals, 46.3 percent of the scoring chances, and 44.9 percent of the high-danger chances during the losing streak. All of those marks put them within the bottom 10 teams of the NHL.
Only the Chicago Blackhawks (38.8%) have managed a worse shot-attempts percentage during the last six games. Chicago is 23-49-5 this season and 41 points away from the second wild card playoff spot in the Western Conference.
From Carbery’s perspective, his players will find the recipe to win with a good play or a fantastic goal, and then abandon the strategy unwittingly. Carbery used Max Pacioretty’s first-period goal, authored by the team’s third line including Hendrix Lapierre and Sonny Milano, to explain the maddening tendency.
The third line was able to put pressure on the Senators’ defense, causing a turnover behind the net. The three forwards then used their skill to create a layup for Pacioretty, who had been on an 18-game goalless streak before scoring Sunday night.
“You have momentum,” Carbery said. “Now, okay, we just created two turnovers on the forecheck. Patch gets a Grade A, he doesn’t score on the one goalie handle, and then (Joonas) Korpisalo got nervous playing pucks the rest of the game right? He wouldn’t come out. So then, you’ve got the momentum 1-0. The recipe is there. We need to put pressure on their D. We need to make sure (we realize) they played last night. Make him have to go back on pucks constantly. And then get away from him. We mismanage three pucks. We’re firing pucks in linesmen’s skates. We can’t get the red line. Then we fumble it. Those little plays, they seem inconsequential. Guys are trying. We’re not able to execute in those moments, which hurt you this time of year.”
Carbery continued, “Lappy’s line obviously set the standard for us from a forecheck standpoint and their willingness to do it. Then we got stubborn through like a 10-minute stretch and then we had to show it (on the bench). Then we got back to it. It wasn’t all bad.
“It’s just sustaining that and being consistent with that is a real struggle for us right now to do it for 60 minutes and even for like two, three minutes when we lose momentum. What experienced teams do is nip that right away. The next line out nips it right away and says ‘naw, we know what we need to do.’ We’ve got manage the puck, we’ve got to stop the momentum, and hold it up against the wall. You do anything to just stall a shift. Ours turns from two, three minutes into an eight-minute sequence in the second period where we were under attack. That recognition and being able to get out of those spots with just one shift where you’re really pinned down and give up a couple scoring chances as opposed to now 10 shifts.”
Despite limping down the stretch, the Capitals are still within striking distance of either the second wild card spot in the East or the third and final guaranteed playoff spot in the Metropolitan Division. However, they will need to win most of their remaining five games and potentially get some help from the four other teams they are battling with.
“I know we haven’t won in a while, but it hasn’t really felt (like that), as weird as it is to say, I don’t sense that from our group of it building,” Carbery said after practice at MedStar Capitals Iceplex, Monday. “We’re still right there. As crazy as that sounds, we’re one win away from potentially, in some way, controlling our own destiny. So as much as it’s been a struggle to find points, we’re still right there now.”
