Caps and Pens Get Set for Game 5
Fives are wild as the Caps and Pens vie for the lead in their tied and defensively tight second-round playoff series
Four games into their third straight second-round Stanley Cup playoff series, the Capitals and the Penguins are - to the surprise of few, probably - all even at two games each. The two teams split a pair of games in the District, and they split a pair in Pittsburgh. On Saturday night they're back in D.C. for the all important Game 5, a contest that will determine which team will have the opportunity to close out the other when the two teams travel back to the 'Burgh for Monday night's Game 6.
The Pens evened the series with a 3-1 victory in Game 4 in Thursday night. Pittsburgh's Jake Guentzel scored the only five-on-five goal for either team in that game, a tally that came while a Washington skater was playing without a stick. Guentzel also scored the last goal of the game, an empty-netter in the waning seconds.
"Like I've always said, in the playoffs we have to have a short memory," said Caps center Evgeny Kuznetsov. "We have to forget right away. Now we know you have to win two games and we have to focus game by game."
Washington (seven) and Pittsburgh (five) have combined for just a dozen goals at five-on-five in this series, and three of the Pens' markers came in a span of less than five minutes in the third period of Game 1. Both teams boast a lot of offensive firepower, but both have been playing it tight in their own zone at five-on-five.
"When you look at the star power on both sides," says Caps coach Barry Trotz," you think it's going to be 7-6 or something like that. There's a lot of commitment on both sides, a lot of resiliency on both sides. Now it's a best-of-three. I have a lot of faith in our group. Our response has always been good, and we've been resilient all year. We've got a lot of belief in our room. [Game 5] is a big game. They all are."
Thursday's Game 4 marked the first time this postseason that the Caps were blanked at five-on-five; Washington's lone goal was a T.J. Oshie power-play goal in the second period. Tom Wilson - now one game into a three-game NHL-mandated suspension - helped set up four of the Caps' seven goals at five-on-five in the first three games of this series. The Caps scuffled at five-on-five early in their first-round series against Columbus, but they began to have some success when they started going to the net on a more consistent basis. Some tip goals and some rebound opportunities began to present themselves, enabling the Caps to supplement their steady diet of power-play goals.
Early in this series, the Caps fattened up on rush goals at five-on-five. Only two of the Caps' five-on-five goals in this series - both of them in a 4-3 Game 3 victory - came off the forecheck or offensive-zone shifts. Each of the other five came on the rush, and four of the rush goals came in the first two games of the series. With the rush opportunities largely dried up and power plays harder to come by in the latter rounds, the Caps will need to get creative to generate some five-on-five offense.
"Their forwards did a good job of getting in lanes and deterring our [defensemen's] shot lanes," said Oshie after Game 4. "In those instances, we've got to work on shooting for tips and missing the net. Forwards have got to get the puck up maybe a little quicker, and just get the shots off a little sooner. I didn't feel like there was too much going on [off] the rush tonight, at least from our end. When that's happening, you've got to find a way to get pucks to the net, and that's a good start for us."
Washington put 34 of 72 shot attempts on net in Game 1, and it had 32 shots on 69 tries in Game 2. But the Caps were limited to 22 shots on 48 tries in Game 3 and 21 in 48 in Game 4. It's not that the Pens have out-possessed the Caps in the last two games, either. Both teams have battened down the hatches in their own end, and both have been defending with tenacity.
"I think that's the balance that we have to find," says Pens coach Mike Sullivan. "That's the balance that we have found when we have success. As talented as our team is and as dynamic as we can be offensively, we have to be a team that's hard to play against. We have to be a team that forces our opponents to work for any sort of chances that they get at our net. And I think that's the formula for success in the playoffs.
"We try to convince our group of the importance of that and making sure that we're diligent with the decisions we make with the puck so that we don't force plays that aren't there in the wrong areas of the rink at the wrong time of the game. I think that situational play and that situational awareness with our own puck possession is so critically important to the success that we have. It's something that we discuss with our team throughout the course of the regular season and throughout the course of the playoffs."
In Wilson's absence, Washington deployed Devante Smith-Pelly on the right side of that line with Alex Ovechkin and Kuznetsov in Game 4. Ovechkin finished the game without a shot on net, and he didn't have any shot attempts in the game's first two periods. Kuznetsov led the Caps with five shots, but none of them came in the third when - with the Caps down just one goal - Washington managed only three shots on net, none of them in the final nine-plus minutes of regulation.
"I think in the third when it was 2-1, we were really pushing hard," says Caps winger Jakub Vrana. "We played in their end pretty much the whole period. We just didn't put the puck in the net. Those little things - just little inches around the net, just go hard to the net, put pucks in the net. Hopefully something's going to go in next game. But I think we played a good game. We still can get a little bit better."
Game 5 would be the time to do it.
"I think every game both teams recalibrate in some areas," says Trotz. "There are certain things that we've already noticed in some of the stuff that we've looked at this morning that is a slight change in their game. It's not a massive change, something that maybe you don't see visually, but when we see certain situations back-to-back-to-back-to-back where you watch it over a length of time, we get the opportunity to almost look zone-by-zone and we start to see trends. They're doing the same things.
"There are little changes we've noticed with them, and there's some changes that we added in. Some of them worked and some of them didn't have the effect that we wanted [them] to. At the end of the day, it's two guys going nose to nose, battling for position, battling for free pucks, executing on plays under pressure. And once we put a plan in place, we put the players in charge, really."
"We can't win the hockey game with one goal," says Caps winger Vrana. "We've got to go more to the net and be a little more aggressive around the net. But it is what it is right now. It's a tight game. It's a tight series, tied 2-2. We're getting ready for next game."
