With their 3-2 loss to the San Jose Sharks, the Capitals endured an unfortunate and ever-growing familiar feat of not being able to string two wins together. The Capitals have not won two games in a row since their last win against the Sharks on December 3, going 0-6-1 after a win since then.
The message from head coach Spencer Carbery and from the players in the team’s locker room after Thursday night’s loss was consistent: the team is running out of time to get its act together. With 34 games remaining in the regular season, the 24-18-6 Capitals currently sit outside the playoff picture with the 12th-best points percentage in the Eastern Conference.
“It’s not an Xs and Os thing,” Carbery said postgame. “It’s the consistency of being able to repeat a certain way that is required for us to play to have success in this league. That’s as simply put as I can put it. It’s an ability to do it time and time and time again.
“So, that’s shifts, periods, games, break it down to whatever you want. It’s our ability to be able to do that, and you can encompass that all in consistency, but game to game, period to period, just not able to sustain it and do it for long enough consistently.”
The formula in games has been the same in recent weeks: the Capitals go down multiple goals in the first and second periods, then bounce back with a ferocious third frame. While that earned them an overtime win against the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday, they weren’t able to climb out of the two-goal hole they dug against the Sharks.
“Obviously, not able to make any ground up,” Dylan Strome said. “We don’t deserve to after that game. We played good in the third, but we put ourselves in a hole early. Yeah, not good enough.”
“After the first period, we give up 11 chances, and we get out at 0-0,” Carbery said. “You dodge a bullet there, and you feel like, ‘Okay, we got our feet under us, we get a mulligan, let’s get to work here.’ And it was the complete opposite. Our inability to consistently get to a certain level of play required to have success in this league is, yeah, it wasn’t there.”
Rookie forward Ryan Leonard was one of the bright spots in the loss, scoring a highlight-reel goal to bring the Capitals within one in the third period. While the goal was a great response to a tough game for Leonard against the Canadiens, the 20-year-old winger was more concerned about his team not picking up two standings points.
“I tried to bounce back personally,” Leonard said. “You want to get the win, though. It’s getting frustrating at this point. We can’t really win two games in a row. We’ve got to get something going fast.”
Since the Capitals beat the Sharks 7-1 in San Jose on December 3, the team has struggled mightily at both five-on-five and on the power play. At five-on-five during that stretch of 20 games, the Capitals have owned just 48 percent of the shot attempts, 47.3 percent of the expected goals, 48.1 percent of the scoring chances, and 48.4 percent of the high-danger chances.
“We’ll just continue to hammer home the way it needs to look, and then you get to work on teaching it individually and as a group,” Carbery said. “But, this time, we’re almost at game 50, right? So, to say it’s concerning that we can’t get any traction and we aren’t able do it for two, three, four, five games. Let’s take even a step back from games – two, three, four, five, six periods in a row. It’s concerning.”
On the power play in those same 20 games, they’ve converted just eight times. The Capitals’ inability to capitalize on their man-advantage has seen their power play effectiveness fall below 16 percent, ranking 28th in the league after Thursday’s loss. They’ve also allowed six shorthanded goals, giving them the NHL’s worst net power-play percentage (11.5 percent).
The Capitals will wrap up their current home stand with a game against the Florida Panthers on Saturday night. They’ll then embark on a long, six-game road trip that could legitimately make or break their season, given how close the playoff race in the East is. Carbery says the goal now is to regroup and refocus ahead of that critical stretch.
“It’s impossible to avoid frustration,” Carbery said. “Okay, everybody is frustrated in there right now – players, staff, coaches. Okay, what do you do about it? How are you going to fix that? That’s where my brain will go in about 10-15 minutes, and where our players’ brains should go.
“‘How am I going to fix that? How am I going to be able to bring it consistently Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, repeat.’ And that’s what we need to do a better job as an entire group of problem solving. That’s what’s required, right? We’ll identify the things, work individually, and collectively continue to teach and help our group be able to play consistently at a higher level.”
