Caps Come Up Empty vs. Avs

During the course of their recently completed three-game road trip, first periods were the Caps' kryptonite. They held their own over the final 40 minutes - particularly in the last two games - but they were outscored by a combined 8-0 in the opening frames of the three contests and were never able get a scoreboard lead for themselves at any point on the trip, coming home with an 0-2-1 mark for their journey.

Facing the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche in the homestand opener on Saturday, the Caps rectified their slow start woes, but their final 40 minutes were lacking, and once again the win column eluded them, as did the back of the Colorado net.
Alexandar Georgiev stopped all 32 shots sent in his direction to record his first shutout as a member of the Avalanche and the ninth of his NHL career, as the Caps suffered a 4-0 whitewash, their ninth loss in 11 games (2-6-3) and the fifth game in the last six in which they've not held a lead at any point.
"I don't think we put ourselves in good positions to score goals tonight," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "Everything was more to the perimeter than it was to the interior, and we've got to do a better job there. And just with the adversity over the course of the game, we didn't do a very good job of handling it."
The Caps came out with a lot of jump and plenty of verve on Saturday, and they were dominant at 5-on-5 in the first, outdoing the Avs in virtually every aspect of the game. Washington owned a 14-3 advantage in shots on net at even strength in the first, a 23-12 lead in shot attempts, and they doubled up the Avs 6-3 in high danger scoring chances in the first frame, according to naturalstattrick.com.
What they didn't do was get out of the first with a lead, or without falling behind on the board. The Caps were whistled for three tripping penalties in the first period, and while they weathered the first of those Colorado power plays, the last two of those minor penalties came 34 seconds apart, giving the Avs a two-man advantage of 86 seconds in duration, and marking the first time in 20 games this season that the Caps' penalty-killing outfit was tasked with trying to snuff out a 5-on-3.
They couldn't quite pull it off. Darcy Kuemper made two saves from in tight against his former teammates, and the Caps combined to block five Colorado shots - including three by defenseman Nick Jensen in a span of just four seconds - but a Cale Makar one-timer with 16 seconds left on the first penalty gave the Avs a 1-0 lead at 19:39 of the first.
"It wasn't bad; we had some good chances, but they capitalized on theirs," says Caps center Dylan Strome of the first period specifically.
Colorado rallied to outdo the Caps territorially the rest of the way, and the Avs generated far more in the way of high danger opportunities over the final two periods (11-2 at evens, according to naturalstatrick.com) while Washington's offensive zone forays too often resulted in a one and done situation, or a shot from distance that stuck to Georgiev with no second opportunity available.
The Avs already had all the offense that Georgiev would require, but Nathan MacKinnon scored the prettiest goal of the night a few minutes after the midpoint of the second period. First, he put on a stickhandling clinic high in the Washington zone, his hands working furiously before releasing a perfectly placed shot that he tucked into a teacup at the far corner of the cage at 13:14 to double the Avs' lead.
A late Washington power play in the middle period gave the team a chance to halve the visitors' lead, but ultimately produced only futility and frustration. The Avs struck for two more goals in the third, both on fortuitous bounces.
Jacob MacDonald's drive from the left circle glanced off Kuemper's glove, hit Avs winger Andrew Cogliano in front and bounded in at 8:57 to make it 3-0. Later in the frame, Caps captain Alex Ovechkin pulled the puck off the stick blade of MIkko Rantanen deep in Washington ice, and flung it across the ice, right to the tape of Artturi Lehkonen, who buried it to account for the 4-0 final at 16:12.
Looking back now, getting into penalty trouble late in the first and then giving up a 5-on-3 goal late in the frame after playing so well for so much of the opening period was where the game turned for the Caps.
"I don't know if it was really frustration there," says Jensen. "I think the frustration was how we came out in the second, and then they took it to us. Our response in the third was almost just as bad as the second, so I think those are the frustrating parts.
"I know myself personally, I was a little deflated out there. I was trying to bring energy to the game - I think all of us are, but we're having trouble finding it - and we seemed pretty spread out where they're coming like a swarm on us. That's something that we try to do, we just couldn't find it tonight."
Washington is 7-1-1 when it scores as many as three goals in a game this season, but it has done so in fewer than half of its 20 games to date, and it holds an 0-9-2 record when scoring two or fewer goals.
"I think it definitely unraveled," says Laviolette. "We came out and I thought we were really good in the first 15 minutes. And then we took the penalties and went down 1-0. We started to face a little bit of adversity; they scored the second one and I thought we unraveled even more from there. And then the third was no good, at all."
For the first time in more than three weeks, the Caps find themselves with more than one day between games, and they'll practice for two days and rest for one before the Philadelphia Flyers come in on Wednesday for the middle match of the three-game homestand.
"It's obviously not the best game, not the game we wanted," says Strome. "We've got to get back to work - a couple of days of practice - and be back to work ready for Wednesday."