Caps Can't Catch up to Cats

Two games into a three-game road trip, the Caps are still empty-handed. Following Tuesday night's 5-2 loss to the Panthers, the Caps are oh-for-Florida, and they've off to St. Louis for the journey's finale on Thursday night.

The Caps found themselves chasing the Panthers all night and couldn't quite catch up, twice pulling to within a goal of their hosts, but never able to catch them. Washington was unsuccessful on five power play opportunities while the Cats made good on their only man advantage of the night. And while Florida was opportunistic at 5-on-5 as well, the Caps were snake-bitten on many of their own looks.
"In the third [period] at 5-on-5, I thought we really pushed hard," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette, back behind the bench after a two-game absence because of Covid-19 protocol. "I don't think we gave up maybe four chances in the last two periods, and [the Panthers] scored on three of them. We did good things offensively, but then there's breakdowns where we could have and should have done something better."
On the game's first shift, Anthony Mantha narrowly missed giving Washington an early lead on a 2-on-1 rush in the game's first 15 seconds. But Sergei Bobrovsky got a piece of it and it grazed the far post and skittered harmlessly away. Washington had another near miss on a goalmouth scramble after a Joe Snively wraparound bid soon after that.
But it was Florida that started the scoring just ahead of the six-minute mark of the first. Washington lost the handle on the puck high in its own end of the ice on a breakout, enabling Aleksander Barkov to collect the puck and put a wrist shot past Caps goalie Darcy Kuemper from between the tops of the circles at 5:45.
Florida dominated possession and territory in the first, getting multiple looks and chances on some shifts while Washington was mostly one- or none-and-done on its own forays into the attack zone. By the end of the first, the Caps were looking up at a 1-0 deficit on the board and 21-8 in shots on net, this despite winning 10 of 14 face-offs in the first period. Florida held a 30-14 advantage in shot attempts in the first, which was played almost entirely at 5-on-5.
Washington went on the game's first power play in the final seconds of the first, but it was unable to pull even on the carryover portion of the man advantage. Soon after that opportunity ended, officials whistled Lars Eller for a phantom illegal check to the head call on Florida's Carter Verhaeghe. Replays showed that Eller's shoulder made contact with Verhaeghe's chest, not his head.
Naturally, the Cats scored on the ensuing man advantage, taking a 2-0 lead at 3:46 of the second when Sam Reinhart deftly swatted the puck out of midair and past Kuemper from the slot.
The Caps had three more entire power play chances in the second; they spent a total of 7:45 of the second frame on the man advantage, but weren't able to cash in. Bobrovsky like made his best save of the night on John Carlson during a Caps power play just before the midpoint of the middle period, moving laterally to deny him on a rebound opportunity from inside the left circle.
There was a stretch of 4-on-4 hockey woven in between that trio of Washington man advantages in the second, and the Caps cut the Cats' lead with Washington's first 4-on-4 tally of the season.
Snively gained the zone and left it up high for Dylan Strome, who beat Bobrovsky with a wrist shot from above the left circle at 15:04, enabling the Caps to get to the second intermission with a one-goal deficit.
Washington came out with plenty of verve and fire in the third, and the Caps swung the territorial tides hard, dominating the Panthers in their end. The Caps opened the third period with 10 of the first 11 shots on net, but again it was Florida that scored to push its lead back to two goals.
On a rare expedition into Washington ice, Gustav Forsling put a pass to Nick Cousins, who found himself with enough time and space to carve his way around Kuemper and deposit the puck untouched, making it a 3-1 game at 7:02.
The Caps rallied to within one once again at 11:15 of the third when Erik Gustafsson hit Carlson at the back door for a deflection goal to make it a 3-2 contest.
Washington managed to get a fifth power play less than a minute later, but the Caps' extra-man slide reached 0-for-21 as neither of its two shots on net would drop and two others missed the mark.
"Just obviously not good enough," says Strome of the power play. "It's our job to go out there and at least get momentum. I feel like on the first couple, we didn't even do that. It wasn't great tonight on the power play, same as the last couple of games.
"And now it's on us to figure it out. Power play is a huge part of the game. They get a power-play goal tonight and we don't, and that could have made the difference."
The peril doubled when nemesis Carter Verhaeghe scored from the top of the paint with exactly three minutes remaining, again restoring Florida's two-goal cushion. Verhaeghe removed any lingering doubts with an empty-net tally in the penultimate minute, accounting for the 5-2 final.
Washington finished the night with a single-game season high 43 shots on net, 22 of them coming in the third period.
"The last two periods were better than in the first," says Strome. "I think we had our chances to score, but just a couple bad breaks and the puck ends up in the back of our net. With the rut we're in right now, that's kind of the way it's been going. We've got to find a way to get going and start getting some wins."