Caps Fall in Tampa, 5-1

The Caps' 24-hour trip to Tampa turned out the way a few too many of the team's recent games have gone. Washington lost T.J. Oshie for the night after the first period. They started slowly and fell behind early, and then had to play catch-up against an elite Lightning team. And finally, they needed Darcy Kuemper to make a few too many big saves to keep them close enough to try to claim a point or two.

By night's end on Thursday at Amalie Arena, the Caps were on the short end of a 5-1 score, their third straight loss (0-2-1) and third straight game in which they have not been able to play with a lead.
"The first period was tough," says Caps' coach Peter Laviolette. "It was not the way we wanted to start the game at all. I thought we played a much better second period and gave ourselves a chance going into the third.
"Pushing in the offensive zone in the third period, we ended up turning a couple of pucks over and they caught odd man rushes back the other way. So that was tough, but the start was no good."
The Bolts grabbed a 1-0 advantage on a power play when Alex Killorn tipped home a Mikhail Sergachev point shot at 9:20 of the opening period, a juncture at which the Lightning held a 10-2 lead in shots on net.
Late in the first, the Lightning put some serious heat on the Caps and Kuemper, and the Washington netminder made a terrific stop on Ian Cole at the doorstep with just 3.6 seconds left in the first. But Tampa Bay's Pierre-Edouard Bellemare won the ensuing right dot draw back to Steven Stamkos in the pocket, and the veteran sniper picked his corner and put it there, with just eight tenths of a second elapsing in the process.
Playing for the second time in as many nights after a long night of travel, the Stamkos goal doubled the Lightning lead in excruciating fashion for the Caps, who went to the room down two instead of one after 20 minutes of play.
Even worse, Oshie wasn't able to answer the bell at the start of the second and he did not return to the game.
"He was banged up and couldn't come back," says Laviolette of Oshie.
The Caps were better in the second, but they still needed Kuemper to come up large for them. He made his best stop of the frame in the back half of the period, moving laterally to thwart a one-time bid from Brayden Point, a save that loomed larger when the Caps cut the lead in half shortly thereafter.
Washington cobbled together a strong offensive zone shift that featured movement and continuous possession, and it culminated with Craig Smith jamming home his seventh goal of the season - and third in a Washington sweater - from below the goal line with 3:50 left in the second.
"I thought we had some good movement," says Smith. "Obviously we're trying to get pucks to the front of the net, and that's kind of what I was trying to do. I was just wrapping it a little bit and trying to get something in there, but we got a lucky one there. Those are the way you score in this League."
Before the Caps could muster much in the way of an attack in the third, the Lightning restored its two-goal lead when Patrick Maroon found a rebound of an Anthony Cirelli shot and buried it at 4:30.
A dozen minutes later, Maroon followed up another Cirelli chance from the top of the paint to make it a 4-1 game with 3:32 left.
With Kuemper pulled for an extra attacker on a late Washington power play, Bolts blueliner Eric Cernak accounted for the 5-1 final with a shorthanded empty-netter at 18:06.
"Throughout the game, I saw way too many point blank opportunities for them to put the puck in the net," says Caps defenseman Nick Jensen. "That was the score of the game, and if Kuemps doesn't make [those saves] this game's not even close to where it was, even as it ended there."
Starting both ends of a set of back-to-backs with travel for the second time this season, Kuemper did all he could to give the Caps a chance. But like too many games here in the second half of the 2022-23 season, he didn't get enough support offensively or defensively.
"In back-to-back games he battled, especially in the first period when he made some huge saves," says Laviolette. "Even in the second period when I thought we played well, they still had some [chances]. When we were pressing, they came back the other way and had some chances that went board to board, and he had to get across and make some really big saves in the second as well. So he gave us a chance."