The Washington Capitals arrived in New York on the precipice. A combination of their own recent hot streak — earning points in seven of their last nine games — and some serious help from the out-of-town scoreboard had put them just a single point out of a wild-card spot, turning what seemed like impossible playoff hopes into a real possibility.
Their task? Beat the New York Rangers. Both teams were on the second half of a back-to-back, sure, but the Rangers shouldn’t have posed too much of a challenge: New York sat dead last in the Eastern Conference, with a shockingly poor 13-19-7 record at Madison Square Garden. Even with the Rangers on their own hot streak, going 4-1-0 in their last five games, the game should have been winnable.
Instead, the Capitals walked into a massacre.
An utterly disastrous second period saw the Capitals surrender a five-goal lead that only got worse in the third, culminating in an 8-1 final score for Washington’s most lopsided loss of the season. That would have been embarrassing enough in a game without playoff implications, but it also squandered the advantage they’d fought to gain against Buffalo, leaving them with almost no road left to the postseason.
“We knew what we were up against and what’s going on right now with the standings, but we just — I could go through the list; it was a long one,” said Aliaksei Protas. “But at the end of the day we just lost a very important two points and didn’t show up today at all.”
“It’s just frustrating,” added head coach Spencer Carbery. “It’s frustrating because we fought as hard as we have to get back into this spot where we’re within striking distance. Does it take a lot out of you? No doubt. But these are big games, and unfortunately we just didn’t have any gas tonight.”
The night started out rough for the Capitals, with Rangers forward Conor Sheary opening the scoring just 23 seconds into the game, but Connor McMichael was able to respond with an impressive breakaway goal later in the first. That comeback potential was nowhere to be found in the latter two periods.
Carbery told reporters postgame he saw the Capitals slip “quite honestly, right from puck drop, first shift of the game.”
Of the team’s start, Carbery said, “Doesn’t decide the game, but you could see, we get behind the eight ball. And just from there — frustrating night for whatever reason. We just did not have anything tonight. We looked really slow. We couldn’t move. And then the execution go along with it, we just didn’t have it today.”
Things started to get ugly in the second period, when back-to-back penalties from Dylan Strome And Antony Beauvillier for pucks over the glass allowed JT Miller to retake New York’s lead.
“They just started to pile on after that,” said Matt Roy.
Carbery didn’t pin the loss on any single sequence.
“I mean, those are huge moments in the game, no doubt,” he said. “But even without that — look, I’m not going to put it on one power play. We lost the game 8-1. You just saw the second and third period… We’re still in that game after the first period. It’s 1-1. And then the second period, wheels come off.”
Through the second and third, the Rangers outshot the Capitals 24-14, out-chanced them 28-8, and held a whopping 11-2 advantage in high-danger chances, per Natural Stat Trick.
“I feel like we gave up too many odd-man rushes,” said Protas. “We can’t just throw Chucky (goaltender Charlie Lindgren) under the bus like this. Especially in that time of the year when we need points, we need to win.
“We’ve always been talking about ‘It doesn’t matter how it looks,’ but it just can’t look like this. We’ve got to find a way to just — even if it’s back-to-back, they’re also in the same spot. We’ve just got to find a way to be way faster, way smarter with the puck, and we didn’t do it tonight.”
Charlie Lindgren didn’t have an easy job: he hadn’t played since March 12, and now he’d been thrown into a season-deciding game. Carbery even left the door open for Logan Thompson to play both halves of the back-to-back before opting to put Lindgren in net on Sunday. Washington’s skaters didn’t give Lindgren much help up front, either, allowing the Rangers to run roughshod over the game in the final 40 minutes while barely generating anything in return.
But the Capitals needed Lindgren to rise to the occasion, and he fell short of that goal. He let in a quarter of the 32 shots he faced and looked shaky in net, even on chances that he managed to save. Per MoneyPuck, Lindgren ended the night with 4.33 goals saved below expected.
The defensive breakdowns that helped doom Washington weren’t new: Sunday marked the fifth time in the last six games that the Capitals allowed at least four goals against. This time, however, they had neither the offensive firepower nor the goaltending to compensate.
“We’ve got some defensive issues through the last, call it, dozen games,” said Carbery. “We’ve been able to cover it up with some goaltending performances, some (high-)scoring games, getting fortunate in some games, but if you look under the hood of what we’re giving up on a nightly, pretty consistent basis, we’ve got to correct some things defensively, for sure.”
Just 24 hours earlier, the Capitals were within striking distance of a playoff spot; their odds now sit in the single digits. They currently sit three points out of a playoff spot with just four games remaining. Knowing what Sunday’s game could have been, what it could have meant for their season had they gotten a win, only worsened the sting.
“It’s tough,” said Protas. “We put ourselves in this spot, but those big games, I feel like they can really show who we are as a team and where we are at as a team. I feel like we were doing a pretty good job down the stretch, but this game today, I can say it was embarrassing. It can’t be like that in this time of the year.”
Now, the Capitals have no other option but to look forward. They haven’t been officially eliminated just yet, so they’ll try to fight on, however slim their hopes may be.
“You’ve got to have a short memory this time of year. Throughout the year, there’s ups and downs, and there’s games that we wish we could have back. But we don’t have that luxury of having more games, obviously. So it’s a short mindset. We’ve just got to focus on our next one here.”
