Caps Cough Up Four-Goal Lead in 6-5 Loss to Ducks

It's only December 2, but the Caps were sufficiently moved by the giving spirit of the holiday season on Sunday afternoon. Leading 5-1 in the latter half of the second period over the visiting Anaheim Ducks, the Caps gave up five unanswered goals in just over 20 minutes of playing time, turning what should have been their eighth straight win into a gift-wrapped victory and two points for the Ducks.

Give the Ducks some credit for not rolling over when down four goals midway through the finale of a five-game road trip, but this debacle was much more about the Caps giving the game away than the Ducks taking it.
Two of Anaheim's goals came on unsecured rebounds. Two of them - including Pontus Aberg's game-winner with 5:05 left - came in the wake of neutral zone turnovers by the Caps. And two of them came on third period power plays, as the Caps took some needless penalties in the third and their streak of 20 straight successful penalty-killing missions came to a halt.
"It was mostly self-inflicted for sure," says Caps coach Todd Reirden. "We got away from our team identity, and we worked really hard to establish our identity in the run of games that we were winning there. If you're going to make mistakes and turn it into a chance for chance game when you're ahead, you're playing with danger. That was a tough loss, but certainly one that will be easy to learn from because they were correctable mistakes."
It was a generational loss, literally. The last time an NHL team rallied from a four-goal ditch to win in regulation on the road was nearly 20 years ago, on March 3, 1999 when the Colorado Avalanche achieved the feat at the Panthers' expense in Florida.
"We kind of stopped playing there after 5-1," says Caps center Nicklas Backstrom. "We got a little too passive. They're a good team and they got the two quick goals there [late in the second], and they kept going after that. When we were up 5-1, we should have been a little more aggressive than we were, so it's our fault."
The Caps got the offense going early on Sunday, taking a 1-0 lead in the game's first minute. Off a two-on-one rush, Alex Ovechkin fed Backstrom for the latter's 10th goal of the season just 41 seconds after the opening puck drop.
Less than six minutes later, the Caps doubled their lead. A shift after Ducks goalie John Gibson took a Devante Smith-Pelly shot off his bucket, the Caps' fourth line put together an offensive zone shift that bore fruit when Chandler Stephenson slid a shot off a defender's skate, through Gibson and into the net from the right half wall at 6:08.
Anaheim got one back just ahead of the midpoint of the frame. Caps goalie Braden Holtby stopped a Rickard Rakell shot, but Ryan Getzlaf's boardinghouse reach enabled him to get a stick on the rebound before anyone else, and he tucked it through Holtby at 9:24 to halve the Washington advantage to 2-1.
Minutes later, Getzlaf swung his derriere into Holtby's head, incurring a minor for goaltender interference in the process. Thirteen seconds after planting that same derriere in the penalty box, Getzlaf watched helplessly as Tom Wilson tipped home a John Carlson shot from the right point at 13:19, restoring the Caps' two-goal cushion at 3-1.
With that goal, Gibson exited in favor of veteran Ryan Miller after yielding three goals on 11 shots in 13:19 of work.
Evgeny Kuznetsov made it a 4-1 game with a dazzling goal at 4:59 of the second, his first even-strength goal of the season. Taking a pass from Brett Connolly, Kuznetsov blazed into the Anaheim zone, around defenseman Jacob Larsson and down the right side. Kuznetsov carried toward the cage, got Miller to commit, went to the backhand, tucked the puck between Miller's pad and the post, went back to the forehand and tapped it in from well below the goal line.
Anaheim challenged, alleging that Kuznetsov was offside on the play. But video review showed Kuznetsov dragged his back foot to stay onside, and the goal counted.
Washington's fourth line contributed its second goal of the day to the cause, Nic Dowd scoring off the rush when Stephenson's centering feed got past Miller after banking off Dowd's skate blade to make it 5-1 at 13:30 of the second.
Not only did Washington own a four-goal lead at that point, they had just held the Ducks without a shot on net for a stretch of 18 minutes and 16 seconds, starting just ahead of the eight-minute mark of the first.
Anaheim's parade of unanswered goals started 61 seconds after Dowd extended the Caps' lead. Andrew Cogliano scored on his own rebound at 14:31 to make it 5-2, and a Caps turnover in neutral ice quickly morphed into a Rickard Rakell goal to make it a 5-3 game just 55 seconds later.
The Caps led by two goals after the first period, and they led by two after the second. But Washington couldn't get out of its own way in the third.
Washington played penalty-free hockey for 40 minutes, but Kuznetsov changed that by taking an offensive-zone slashing call to put the Caps on the kill. They managed to kill that one, but Dmitry Orlov was whistled for two boarding penalties less than two minutes apart, and Anaheim cashed in on both to tie the game.
First, Aberg fired a shot through traffic and off the post and in to make it a 5-4 game at 7:16. Then Ryan Kesler made a nice feed to set up Hampus Lindholm for a back door goal at 9:01, tying the game at 5-5.
The Caps got a power play chance of their own with 7:12 left, but not only did they fail to convert, they permitted the go-ahead goal in the immediate aftermath.
Another neutral zone turnover sent the Ducks off in transition with a short ice sheet, and Aberg netted his second goal of the game seconds later to stun the Caps and end their seven-game winning streak in excruciating fashion.
"I think we lost a little bit of focus and our ability to have had success over the streak we just lost tonight was playing a certain way," says Reirden. "We stopped playing that way, and they were able to capitalize. They're a good team, the league is too good, and if you give them chances, they're going to convert. It's a good lesson, but a hard lesson."