Blues Blow by Caps, 5-2

Washington's three-game road trip got off to an inauspicious start on Thursday night in St. Louis in a 5-2 loss to the Blues. Two days after giving up five unanswered goals to Nashville in a 6-3 home ice loss to the Predators, the Caps yielded four unanswered goals to the Blues in suffering consecutive losses for the first time in a month.

The underachieving Blues snapped a two-game slide by outworking and outplaying the Caps after Washington took a 2-1 lead early in the second period. Once St. Louis forged ahead, they gave the Caps nothing with which to spark a comeback.

"Their execution was better and then they started to win more races to pucks and battles around our net," says Caps coach Todd Reirden. "Those are the important areas of the game, and they were more urgent and desperate in those tough areas than we were as the game went on. There were spurts of it, and obviously we get ahead in the game, but we weren't able to sustain it for the full 60 [minutes]."
When Blues center Oskar Sundqvist scored to give the Blues a 3-2 lead late in the second, more than 23 minutes remained in the game. But the Caps managed only four shots on net the rest of the way, two late in the second and two in the third. They went without a shot on goal for more than 13 minutes at one point, their deficit stretching from a single goal to three in the process.
"They were a lot better today, wanted it more," says Caps defenseman Matt Niskanen of the Blues. "They were skating and competing hard, won races and were more determined than we were. If we're being honest about it, we didn't have a very good game and they played a pretty darned good game."

After an early power play opportunity went by the wayside, the Caps fell behind 1-0 on a Robert Thomas tally exactly four minutes into the contest. St. Louis defenseman Robert Bortuzzo put a shot on net with some air underneath it from the right point, and Thomas executed a drive-by deflection - going to the net out of the right wing corner - to stake the Blues to a 1-0 advantage.
The Caps displayed some strong penalty killing in the middle of the frame with Brooks Orpik in the box for a hi-sticking double minor. Washington had a trio of scoring chances during that four-minute stretch, and it outshot St. Louis 2-1 while Orpik was incarcerated.
In the back half of the first, the Caps evened the score on Alex Ovechkin's 30th goal of the season. Washington put together a brief shift in the attack zone, and Michal Kempny made a sharp cross-ice feed from the left wing wall to Ovechkin, who beat Jake Allen with a wrist shot from the right circle to make it a 1-1 game at 15:34.
The Blues put plenty of offensive zone heat on the Capitals throughout the second period, and they started early. But it was Washington that took the lead early in the middle period.
Kempny gained control of the puck in Washington ice and pushed it to Lars Eller, who sprung Brett Connolly into the Blues zone on a two-on-one with Jakub Vrana driving the left lane. Connolly cut to the middle and shot from the slot, and Allen made the stop. But Connolly whacked his own rebound in for a 2-1 Washington lead, three minutes into the second.
Allen kept his team close in the second, making stops on Wilson and Jakub Vrana to prevent Washington from expanding its lead.

A total of nine penalties were whistled in the second. Fighting majors for Tom Wilson and Bortuzzo started the parade, but there was some four-on-four time and a brief four-on-three power play for St. Louis, and the Blues pulled even on a power play a couple of minutes after the midpoint of the period.
From just off the right post, St. Louis center Ryan O'Reilly found and fed Blues defenseman Colton Parayko, who beat Holtby at the back door, tying the game at 2-2 at 12:23 of the second.
Just over four minutes later, the Blues regained the lead. Holtby stopped an Alex Pietrangelo point shot, but Sundqvist got to the rebound first, putting a lunging backhander behind Holtby at 16:33.
St. Louis was all over Washington early in the third, too. The Blues managed six shots on net and 10 shot attempts before the Caps were able to muster as much a shot attempt.
Pietrangelo scored from center point to make it a 4-2 game at 5:44, and Tyler Bozak completed the scoring with a breakaway goal at 11:08.
The Caps are two games shy of the midpoint of the season, and they have yet to lose as many as three straight in any fashion. They'll need a victory on the second night of back-to-backs against Dallas on Friday to keep that run going. They'll also need to play much better hockey than they've played of late.
"We didn't play that well, and they wanted it more than us," says Connolly of Thursday's loss. "We didn't play our best, and they were the better team tonight for sure."