WASHINGTON, DC — After recording a seven-game win streak at home against some of the best teams in the NHL, the Washington Capitals fell 4-2 against the struggling Pittsburgh Penguins, Friday night. The Capitals had the clear advantage going into the game: even beyond Pittsburgh’s 5-8-2 record, Washington came into the matchup rested while the Pens had lost 5-1 to the Carolina Hurricanes the night before.
The Penguins took an early lead, going up 2-0 in the first 6:59 with goals from Erik Karlsson and Michael Bunting. Once in that hole, the Capitals struggled to recover. Head coach Spencer Carbery suggested his team wasn’t prepared to face opponents who, despite their losing record and lack of rest, were plenty capable of pulling out a win.
“I don’t look at any games in this league, back-to-back situations, a team that has the record they do — anybody can beat anybody on any given night,” Carbery said after the loss. “I thought they played, especially their start, we were not good to start. You could tell potentially we underestimated how competitive the game was going to be in that first 20 minutes and then we got caught up in the second and figured it out, but you spot two, so we’re chasing the game from the start.”
Andrew Mangiapane offered a similar sentiment postgame, highlighting the dangers of writing any team off entirely.
“We’ve got to learn from it and not take anyone lightly, whether back-to-back or below us in the standings or anything like that. And every team’s good in this league and you’ve got to be prepared to play every night.”
To ask goaltender Charlie Lindgren, the teams’ lopsided records may have even worked in Pittsburgh’s favor. While the Capitals have enjoyed plenty of success to start the season, the Penguins came into the night hungry for a chance to proved themselves.
“Obviously they’re a desperate hockey team,” he said. “They need to stack up some wins. Even if it was a back-to-back, you couldn’t tell. Right from the get-go, you could tell they had their legs and you could see how much this game meant to them.
The Capitals struggled both offensively and defensively against Pittsburgh, allowing plenty of scoring chances for the Pens and failing to convert on the many opportunities that came their way. Both teams ended in excess of 30 shots, with Natural Stat Trick giving the Caps a 36-28 edge in total scoring chances, but the Capitals struggled to get the puck into the back of the net.
Carbery criticized his team’s loose play, pointing to a series of uncharacteristic mistakes that began early in the game and never quite went away.
“I just thought we were off,” he said. “I didn’t like our play without the puck. It started from those first two: the two goals we give up are huge mistakes that you just don’t see, I just don’t see them in our game very often. And so right then, my antennas are up of, like, ‘This is off,’ in the game, and then I feel like it got cleaned up a little bit from an offensive standpoint, but we were still doing a lot of things…that were leading to chances against us, couldn’t get out of our own end. Whether it was a poor read and a missed assignment, or it was a lost battle, or it was a misread inside of our structure, it wasn’t tight.”
The Capitals won’t have to dwell on the loss for long as they’re set finish their back-to-back against the St. Louis Blues Saturday night. After a sloppy loss to the team’s biggest rival, the Caps should have plenty of motivation when they next hit the ice.
“Just a crazy game,” said Jakub Vrana. “I think we let in a lot of chances. But on the other hand, [the Penguins did] the same thing, so I think both teams got a lot of chances to score goals. Today wasn’t our day. They popped that one in the third and we had chances, we just couldn’t score. But that’s just how hockey goes sometimes. Good thing we’re playing tomorrow and a new chance for us to win a hockey game.”
