Ryan Lomberg broke a 2-2 tie with a shot from the slot on a sustained offensive zone shift late in the third period, sending the Capitals to a 4-2 defeat on Thursday night at Florida's Amerant Bank Arena, Washington's sixth loss in succession (0-5-1). Lomberg’s goal capped a dominant night for Florida’s fourth line, which turned the tide and ultimately snapped the stalemate with a pair of heavy pressure shifts in Washington’s end in the third period.
The Caps’ start was up to par against one of the League’s elite teams, but the Caps weren’t able to sustain it over the game’s full 60 minutes.
“The first period, I loved from a competitive, from our work ethic, from our battle level, puck decisions,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “Each play, each time we got the puck, it was in the spot that it needed to be. So you're playing a tight game against a good team, and now, the problem is you have to be able to sustain that. And that's where the level of pace of games, and playing against these teams, it's difficult for us to maintain that pace and to be able to play at that level and at that speed for 60 minutes.
“And it catches up with us at certain points, and you saw it in the second period, and then certainly in the third period for stretches where we just struggled to stay at that pace, and it's fast; guys are making plays quick. It just is unfortunate, because I really did like our start. We just weren't able to sustain that level of pace.”
As Carbery noted, the Caps were at their best in the first period on this night, holding their own against the Florida forecheck and shutting down the Panthers’ red hot power play. But over the game’s final two frames, Florida slowly but inexorably wore Washington down, out-attempting the Capitals by a combined total of 58-30 during the 34 minutes and 9 seconds of even-strength hockey played in the final 40 minutes.
Despite taking three minor penalties in the first 20 minutes, the Caps were able to hold their own over that span, and they were able to play with a lead for a while too, a relative rarity during the life of their losing streak.
Caps’ winger Beck Malenstyn came out of the penalty box and drew a penalty shot just ahead of the midpoint of the opening period, but his bid was blockered aside by Panthers’ netminder Sergei Bobrovsky.
Washington was eventually able to get on the board first, jumping out to a 1-0 lead on an Alex Ovechkin power-play goal in the back half of the first frame. From just above the top of the left circle, the Caps’ captain took a tee-up feed from Rasmus Sandin and blasted a one-timer past Bobrovsky at 16:38.
The Caps killed off a pair of Florida power plays in the first period, and they squelched another that crossed over into the middle period. But the Panthers pulled even with the Caps with a Matthew Tkachuk goal at 4:29 of the second; Tkachuk’s skate caught a left point shot from Gustav Forsling, redirecting it past Caps’ netminder Darcy Kuemper to square the score at 1-1.
Washington’s elite video coaching duo intervened to take an Evan Rodrigues snipe to the shelf off the board at 6:57, preventing the Panthers from taking the lead by correctly asserting that Florida was offside on the play.
Minutes after the Caps snuffed out Florida’s fourth extra-man opportunity of the night, the Caps regained the lead with a nifty transition goal. Aliaksei Protas forced a neutral zone turnover, then gained the zone and fed Mike Sgarbossa. Sgarbossa dished to Anthony Mantha on the right side, and the latter expertly tipped it to the shelf on his backhand. Mantha’s 16th of the season gave the Caps a 2-1 lead at 14:03.
With less than three minutes remaining in the second, the Caps were whistled for a fifth minor penalty when Tom Wilson was deemed guilty of elbowing Florida’s Kevin Stenlund in front of the benches. This time, the Caps’ penalty killers couldn’t get it done; Sam Reinhart tied the game with his 38th goal of the season – and his 21st on the power play – with an expert deflection of a Tkachuk left point shot from the top of the crease, tying the game at 2-2 with just 2:28 left in the second.
Florida’s forecheck was prominent in the third as both teams pushed to get the go-ahead goal. Too often in the game’s final 40 minutes, the Caps weren’t able to sustain any lengthy shifts in Florida ice, which served to put more pressure on Kuemper and the Washington defense. The Caps weathered that pressure well against Florida’s top guns, but it was the Panthers’ fourth line that eventually broke the stalemate when Lomberg found the back of the net with 5:32 left.
“We’ve got to make better plays to get the puck out of the zone,” says Caps’ defenseman john Carlson. “I think that was the difference. We could do stuff when we did get into the [offensive] zone better, but if the puck is on our stick, we’ve got to make better plays.”
Washington had one last chance to get the game tied up again with a late power play opportunity, but the Panthers killed it off.
In the final minute, Panthers’ center Eetu Luostarinen accounted for the 4-2 final with an empty-netter, sealing the Caps’ sixth straight setback, which matches their lengthiest slide in the last decade. Twice last season, the Caps dropped six straight games. They haven’t lost as many as seven in a row since the ill-fated 2013-14 campaign.
Things don’t get any easier for the Caps, who now face the League’s top two teams in back-to-back weekend matinee matches. Washington finishes its current trip on Saturday in Boston before returning home to host Vancouver on Sunday.
“We’ve just got to find a way to dig in and get to another level, and be able to sustain it,” reiterates Carbery. “Like in the first period, can you make it two [goals]? And can you make it three?
“You see those sequences where it’s a real struggle for us just to advance the puck, just to get a puck into the neutral zone and out of our defensive zone. And it’s hard. Guys are trying, and they’re tired, and we just have to find a way to be a little more consistent from a 60-minute, one night [standpoint], and we’ll look for that in Boston.”
