The Washington Capitals find themselves down a game in their first-round series against the New York Rangers after falling 4-1 inside Madison Square Garden on Sunday. The Capitals struggled to create offense as they have the entire year and had a few too many defensive breakdowns for Charlie Lindgren to bail them out of.
Rough start. Let’s hope for a bounce back.
- The Rangers didn’t really blow the Capitals out of the water or anything but they took their chances and navigated the back half of the game far better than Washington. Spencer Carbery mentioned his team being far too perimeter-oriented postgame and I could not agree more. The Capitals were far too afraid to take the puck off of the yellow along the boards and into the center of the ice. Yes, you’ll inevitably turn the puck over with that sort of persistent aggression but the alternative is the constant hammering of the puck along the boards from point man to point man, giving Igor Shesterkin a game he could have slept through.
- The power play fell victim to that same lack of creativity and hesitation. They went 0-for-4 on their chances to stamp their mark on the game as they spent far too much time with the puck stationary on the outside. I don’t like having both TJ Oshie and Tom Wilson on the same unit. I also don’t like Alex Ovechkin playing the full two minutes during the playoffs. More time for guys like Hendrix Lapierre and Sonny Milano, please.
- Good for Martin Fehervary scoring his first career playoff goal. And, how was it scored? By moving the puck from outside to in. Great pass from Wilson.
Aliaksei Protas recorded his first career playoff assist and point on the Capitals' first goal.
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) April 21, 2024
- Alex Ovechkin went shotless in a playoff game for just the fourth time in his career. The Capitals have lost all four of those games. I said on Twitter during the game that I don’t think that top-line trio works at all and never really has. The problem is that Dylan Strome is the only center on the roster that seems to consistently work with Ovechkin but his line is playing the best of any on the team right now. This might be crazy talk but I’d maybe try Mike Sgarbossa down the middle with Ovi or maybe just switch TJ Oshie and Sonny Milano. There are just not a ton of options for a not-very-deep team that then moved depth at the deadline.
- Charlie Lindgren stopped 27 of 31 shots in his postseason debut. We came into this series acknowledging that Lindgren would likely need to steal it for the Capitals to move on. He wasn’t terrible but he was definitely far from stealing Game One. Per MoneyPuck, he allowed 1.11 more goals than expected. Shesterkin stopped 0.52 more than expected.
- Here is some optimism at the end of a not-so-positive post. The Rangers won both Game One and Game Two of their first-round series against the New Jersey Devils last season by a combined 10-2 score and then lost four of five to get sent packing. The Capitals lost the first game in three of the four series they won during their 2018 run to the Stanley Cup.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-reference.com and NaturalStatTrick.com.
