A slow start and an inability to establish an offensive zone presence early in the game against the Utah Mammoth doomed the Caps in their 3-2 loss on Tuesday night at Capital One Arena. The visitors jumped out to an early 2-0 lead, and the Caps twice clawed to within a goal of the Mammoth, but they couldn’t manufacture an equalizer.
Both teams cashed in on both of their power play opportunities on Tuesday, so the first goal of the game – off the stick of Utah’s Dylan Guenther midway through the first – was the difference in the contest.
Utah dominated the first 40 minutes of the game from a possession standpoint; the Mammoth held owned a 51-26 disparity in shot attempts at 5-on-5 in the first two frames of the game.
“First and foremost, you’ve got to give them credit,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery of the Mammoth. “That’s a really good hockey team, that’s a fast team, and they are really skilled.
“Part of the first period – especially for us – is when you play a team like that, it’s different. It’s different. And what I mean by that is, it’s just different than a lot of the teams that we play. And so, getting comfortable with how quick they are took us some time. Is that an excuse? Absolutely not. We’ve got to be able to be prepared for their speed and skill, their ability to get through the neutral zone, their ability to cut on entries, and a lot of different stuff.”
A single-game franchise record of 36 blocked shots – 17 of Washington’s 18 skaters had at least one – helped keep the Capitals in a game in which Utah ran up a 70-43 advantage in shot attempts. At all strengths, the Mammoth teed up 78 shot attempts, but nearly half of them were blocked. But Washington had three separate stretches of six or more minutes without a shot on net in the game’s first two periods.
Despite a mostly dismal opening frame, the Caps entered the middle period down just a single goal. Logan Thompson made a pair of early saves on Utah’s J.J. Peterka from in tight, and the Caps laid out to block 14 first-period Utah shot tries, including 11 of them in the first 11 minutes.
Although the Caps won 12 of the 16 first-period face-offs, they didn’t manage much in the way of puck possession. By the end of the first, the Mammoth owned a lopsided 25-8 advantage in shot attempts at 5-on-5. Only one of the 16 face-offs in the first came in Utah ice, and that was the one that started Washington’s only power play of the frame.
The Mammoth built a 2-0 lead on Guenther’s goal off the rush from the high slot at 11:12 of the first, and Mikhail Sergachev’s power-play drive from center point just over two minutes later.
“Just not great decisions with the puck,” says Caps center P-L Dubois of Washington’s early struggles. “I think the way they play, they just kind of reload and give you time. And you think you have time – it's a good thing – and then you can take your time, but they're giving you time because they want you to have time, because you're not dangerous 175 feet from their net. The forwards and the [defensemen] were kind of disconnected, I thought for sure.”
With time winding down on the Washington power play, Rasmus Sandin grabbed the puck deep in the Caps’ end and fired it to Dubois in neutral ice. Dubois lugged it into Utah ice on the left side, then carved his way through the middle with the disc on his backhand. Upon reaching the right circle, Dubois went to his forehand and ripped a shot past Utah’s Karel Vejmelka with 32.2 seconds left in the first.
The Caps weren’t much better in the second. They were able to take more draws in the offensive zone, but their face-off numbers dipped and they needed to block 13 more shots in front of Thompson. But they didn’t generate much in the way of offensive zone time or possession, and all seven of their shots on net were of the “one and done” variety, and they went more than six minutes without testing Vejmelka in the back half of the period.
Late in the middle frame, Jakob Chychrun was boxed for tripping Utah’s Clayton Keller. Washington was 20 seconds shy of killing the penalty when the Mammoth was finally able to get a shot on net. But that shot – off the stick of Peterka via a fine feed from Keller – eluded Thompson and restored the visitors’ two-goal cushion, making it a 3-1 game at 18:24.
In the third, the Caps finally warmed to the task in the offensive zone, but they still couldn’t to solve Vejmelka at 5-on-5. At the first television timeout, Caps winger Tom Wilson drew a call to put Washington on the power play, and Ryan Leonard fired a short side shot past Vejmelka from the right dot to pull the Caps within a goal at 6:31 of the third.
By the middle of the period, the Caps were finally carving out some offensive zone time for themselves. They had a couple of flurries of offensive zone activity in the middle of the period, but after putting a trio of shots on net early in the second half, the Mammoth limited Washington to one shot on net in the final six and a half minutes, and none in the final three-plus minutes with Thompson pulled for an extra attacker.
“They made us feel like we had lots of time and space,” says Wilson. “And then they play that 1-1-3 in the neutral zone, so you try and weave through it, and that doesn't work. They had the puck the majority of the time in the first period, because we were just shooting ourselves in the foot, and they had the puck, and they were executing well. So, it was hard to get it back. They had [offensive] zone draw, after [offensive] zone draw after [offensive] zone draw, so you're defending, and then you don't have a lot of juice to go play offense.”
For the sixth time this season, the Caps scored multiple power-play goals in a game. They’ve lost three of the last four contests in which they’ve done so.
After splitting a six-game homestand and falling 4-0 to Chicago in the homestand finale on Sunday, the Mammoth started its five-game road trip with an impressive victory.
“I loved the speed of our game,” says Mammoth coach Andre Tourigny. “Obviously, the power play came [up] big. Vejie made a key save at the end, so there is a lot of positive in our game. I think they had a push at the end, which we expected. But I liked the pressure we applied on them on their 6-on-5; they had to execute really quickly.
“[The Caps] did a good job, but they could not get high quality [opportunities], so I’m happy about that.”
