Caps Come Up Empty in 2-0 Loss to Isles

During Barry Trotz's four seasons as the Capitals' bench boss, his teams lost as many as four straight games only twice over a span of 328 regular season games. But Trotz's Islanders handed the Caps a 2-0 whitewashing on Friday night in his first time behind the visitor's bench since leading the Caps to their first Stanley Cup title last spring. The loss leaves Washington with just its third losing streak (0-3-1) of four or more games in length in the last four and a half seasons.

"We're not generating enough offense," says Caps coach Todd Reirden. "We were better at not giving up quite as many chances tonight, yet they were able to convert on the ones that they got. So we need to be better, and that's right form the top of our list to the bottom of our list. We need more. We need more from our players."

With Friday's victory, New York hopped over the Caps and into the top spot in the Metropolitan Division standings, a remarkable feat for an Isles team that missed the playoffs by 17 points last season.
Josh Bailey's deflection of a Mathew Barzal shot turned out to be all the offense that New York netminder Thomas Greiss (19 saves) needed to record his second shutout of the season and the 10th of his NHL career. Bailey's goal came early in the third, snapping a scoreless tie. Isles winger Cal Clutterbuck added an insurance marker minutes later, scoring on a breakaway.
"We tried to stall them out a little bit," says Trotz of his team's win over his former employer. "They've got a lot of offense over there and they can light you up pretty quick. I thought we played disciplined, I thought we played with structure and we had a lot of commitment and battle."
For the first time in 2018-19, the Caps and their opponent played 40 scoreless minutes to start the game. It marked just the third time all season that the Caps failed to score in the first 40 minutes, and two of those instances have come in the last four games; their lone goal last Saturday against the Blue Jackets was a late six-on-five goal that enabled them to scrape a point out of a 2-1 overtime loss to Columbus.
Washington played a tighter defensive game on Friday, but its scoring woes continued. The Capitals have now managed just one five-on-five goal in their last four games. The Caps had just three shots on net at five-on-five in the first period, and only 15 on the night.
"We're making it tough on ourselves," says Caps defenseman Brooks Orpik. "We're playing against teams that are trapping, and we're just trying to force pucks through the middle the whole time.
"If you look at the way they're playing against us, they're getting it behind us and a lot of offense is coming from point shots and just outbattling us in front. But we're not even getting an opportunity to do that, because we're trying to go through too many guys in the neutral zone."

The Islanders continued their impressive run of play in back-to-back games this season. A night after handing the Devils a 4-1 loss on Long Island, a game in which the Islanders limited New Jersey to just 17 shots on net, the Isles held the Caps to only 19 shots in sweeping a set of back-to-backs while allowing a single goal.
New York is 5-2-0 on the front end of back-to-backs in 2018-19, and the Isles are a perfect 7-0-0 on the backside. They've outscored the opposition by a combined total of 27-6 in those seven games.
"It should have been easy for us tonight," says Orpik. "We know how Barry coaches and we know that's his calling card - clogging up the neutral zone and clogging up the middle. For whatever reason, we didn't want to accept that."
Caps goalie Braden Holtby returned to action after missing the last two games because of an eye injury. Holtby made 23 saves in being saddled with the loss, the 100th regulation defeat of his NHL career (242-100-37).
Prior to the game, the Caps honored Orpik for his 1,000th career game, which came Monday night against St. Louis. The veteran blueliner received the traditional silver stick from the organization and a Tiffany crystal from the NHL, and his teammates chipped in to send Orpik and his family on a vacation to Utah. A retrospective video tribute of Orpik's career was shown on the overhead scoreboard, too.
At the first television timeout, the Caps aired a tribute to Trotz's four seasons as Washington's bench boss, a tenure that culminated in a Stanley Cup crown last June 7 in Las Vegas. Isles assistant coach Lane Lambert and director of goaltending Mitch Korn were part of that tribute as well; both also spent the last four years with Trotz in Washington, and both worked under him in his prior stop in Nashville as well.
Washington's last four-game slide was nearly two years ago, from March 6-12, 2017 when they lost to Dallas at home and then went out west and lost all three games on their annual California tour to hobble home with four straight regulation losses.