Caps Fall to Bolts, 6-3

The Tampa Bay Lightning need no help to knock off even the best teams in the NHL. If you want to have a chance to take the Bolts down - particularly in their building - mistakes must be minimized. The Caps weren't able to do that on Saturday night in Tampa - especially in the first period - and they came out on the wrong end of a 6-3 score as a result.

Two empty-net goals in the game's final minute made the final score more lopsided than the game itself. When it was all said and done, it was the first 20 minutes that did the Caps in. After the game, Caps coach Todd Reirden was asked how his team measured up in a measuring stick game.
"Not very good if we lost 6-3," Reirden replied. "It's disappointing to end up with a loss like that. I thought we did some decent things as the game went on, but our first period, we didn't manage the puck well enough to give ourselves a chance.
"Come into this building, that's something we found last year is if we were able to manage the puck and not give them easy transition offense, then we would give ourselves a really good chance. We didn't do that in the first, and we didn't have enough guys play to the top of their game tonight. When you lose, that happens. But in my way of evaluating, those are things that could have been better. Obviously you give up two empty-netters, it makes it look a little different than the actual game was. But we can be better than we played tonight."

The Lightning didn't need to work very hard for any of its three first-period goals. The Bolts went up 1-0 on Tyler Johnson's goal at 8:35 of the first. The Caps lost control of the puck in neutral ice, and Tampa Bay quickly transitioned. Brayden Point and Johnson both had a step on the two Washington defenders, and the former fed the latter to make it 1-0 on the short ice rush.
Just under two minutes later, the Lightning doubled its lead when Alex Killorn's centering attempt from the left half wall caromed off the skate of Caps defenseman Dmitry Orlov in front and went into the net for a 2-0 Tampa Bay lead at 10:33.
Washington was able to cut into the Lightning lead shortly thereafter. The Caps had an offensive zone shift going, and when the Bolts gained possession and tried to exit, Evgeny Kuznetsov made a neat stick play to knock down the pass. He tried to make a play, and the puck took a favorable bounce to John Carlson on the weak side. Carlson wound up and fired, beating Tampa Bay goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy on the broken play to make it a 2-1 game at 12:06.
Tampa Bay soon restored its two-goal lead, winning a draw in its own end and scoring 14 seconds later to make it 3-1. The Lightning's Anthony Cirelli beat Kuznetsov on the draw, and the Bolts worked the puck around to Killorn, who took it near the Tampa Bay line and carried into Washington ice in a one-on-one situation with Caps defender Nick Jensen. Jensen kept Killorn in front of him, but the Bolts winger squeezed off a shot, and then got to his own rebound and put it behind Caps goalie Braden Holtby to make it a 3-1 game at 15:56.
Washington got the game's first power play chance late in the first, but that opportunity was abbreviated when Tom Wilson was boxed for hooking. A dozen seconds later, the Caps were in some hot soup when Brett Connolly was sent off for holding, giving the Lightning an instant four-on-three power play that would soon blossom into a five-on-three.
The Caps were able to kill off the remainder of the first period without incident, but they started the middle stanza still down two skaters for the better part of a minute. Some good pressure up ice and a couple of clears later, they were out of the tall grass, but still down a pair of pucks.
That changed when Washington went on a power play ahead of the midpoint of the second. Once again, the Caps converted on a broken play. John Carlson's point shot caught T.J. Oshie in the back and bounded directly to Alex Ovechkin, who quickly pounced and pounded it past Vasilevskiy to make it a 3-2 game at 7:33.
Vasilevskiy made a big stop on Nicklas Backstrom in a one-on-one situation in the back half of the second to preserve that one-goal Lightning lead, and the Bolts carried that advantage into the third.
The Caps had a chance to get even with a carryover power play, but weren't able to do so, and the Lightning restored its two-goal cushion a couple of minutes later on a sustained offensive zone shift. Lightning defenseman Erik Cernak took a feed from partner Ryan McDonagh, crept in on the weak side and threaded a shot through Holtby's five-hole to make it 4-2 at 2:45 of the third.
Washington shrunk the lead to a single goal once again at 12:56 when Ovechkin netted his second goal of the night and his 48th of the season, putting back a rebound of an Orlov shot.
Holtby made some strong stops in the third to keep the Lightning close, and the Caps got a power play opportunity with 5:38 remaining, but couldn't muster the equalizer. Ovechkin narrowly missed filling the hat trick on the short side in the final few seconds of that man advantage, and Jakub Vrana hit the post on a great chance seconds later, the Caps' two best chances at drawing even all night.
The Caps will have two more cracks at the Lightning down the stretch, the first of which is Wednesday night back in Washington.

"I think the first goal is big," says Carlson. "It seemed to be big [against the Lightning] last year. I think you saw that tonight - we were kind of chasing it even though we were playing well. We were still forced into doing maybe a few things that we normally don't do.
"These are fun games to play in. This is a big time hockey game, and it's fun to play in those. I look forward to more."