The Washington Capitals are continuing to lose and fritter away standings points. They haven’t won consecutive games since December 2 and 3 when they beat the Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks in a back-to-back. Now, the goalposts are beginning to move, and they’re focusing on moral victories.
Saturday, the Capitals lost in overtime 6-5 to the Edmonton Oilers at Rogers Place. Coming off a 3-1 win against the Calgary Flames the night before, the Caps began the game with no shots on goal for the first 19:31 of the first period, nearly breaking the franchise-record for fewest shots in a stanza. They woke up in the second period and took a 3-2 lead into the third period. There, they surrendered three different leads to the Oilers, including a game-tying goal by Zach Hyman with 28 seconds remaining in regulation.
Forty-seven seconds into overtime, the Capitals gave the game’s best player, Connor McDavid, an uncontested breakaway, which he scored on easily.
“Yeah, I loved our game tonight,” Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery said postgame. “I thought our guys fought like hell tonight. And like I said this morning, it’s as difficult a game as we have on the schedule. And then you put in the travel last night, getting in at 4 am, just the way we fought. And guys, through the adversity of the game and the ups and downs, and you’re up and now it’s back to even. And I’m just real proud of the way that we played tonight.”
Earlier in the week, Carbery suggested to the media that the Capitals would need to change their identity to win, morphing into a tight-checking team that took pride in winning uglier, low-scoring games. They did anything but against Edmonton, as the Capitals were outshot 40-27 and were dominated in expected goals at all situations, 5.93 to 3.73, per MoneyPuck.
Evan Bouchard had six points in the game (3g, 3a) — his hat-trick goal came on blown coverage during four-on-four play — while Connor McDavid had five points (2g, 3a) and a game-high nine shots.
Complicating matters, the Capitals lost defenseman Rasmus Sandin late in the first period due to a lower-body injury, forcing the team to skate with five D for a majority of the game.
“Yeah. I give our D so much credit,” Carbery said. “I mean, the way — so the group as a whole, but then you go into our D and guys are, you know, hanging on by a thread back there. We got guys battling through stuff. We’re down to five. We’ve got penalty kill after penalty kill after penalty kill. And they’re just fighting through Marty, John, Matty Roy, TVR, Chychy. Like they — those guys were battling out there. And we’re playing with five basically for 40 minutes in tough, tough, tough minutes.”
With the point from the overtime loss, the Capitals moved into a four-way tie for ninth in the Eastern Conference with 57 standings points, five points out of the final wild-card spot. But in points percentage they continue to sit 14th out of 16 Eastern Conference teams. Every team ahead of them have games in-hand.
“We gave ourselves the best chance to win. This is how it’s going to have to look,” Anthony Beauvillier said. “We took a good step in the right direction here.”
The Capitals have now lost three of four games on their six-game road trip — a stretch that Carbery described as crucial where “our season is hanging in the balance” — and seven of their last 10 overall.
“If there’s one thing I know about this group, it’s that we bounce back, and we’re going to keep fighting,” Connor McMichael said.
