Caps Reach End of Road Trip in Buffalo

Feb. 19 vs. Buffalo Sabres at KeyBank Center

Time:3:00 p.m.

TV:NBC Sports Washington

Radio:FAN 106.7, Capitals Radio 24/7

Washington Capitals 33-18-7Buffalo Sabres 17-31-11

Washington reaches the end of its season-long four-game road trip when it takes on the Sabres in Buffalo in a Presidents' Day matinee match on Monday.

The Caps haven't seen the Sabres since suffering a 2-1 loss here on Nov. 7, but they'll seem them twice this week. The Sabres visit the District on Saturday night when the two sides close out their season's series for 2017-18. Buffalo is the only Eastern Conference club against which the Caps have yet to record a victory this season.

The Caps come into Monday's matinee on the heels of a 7-1 humbling at the hands of the Blackhawks in Chicago on Saturday night. The Hawks' victory over Washington ended their eight-game losing streak (0-7-1) and their seven-game slide (0-6-1) on home ice.

From Washington's standpoint, the loss trims the Caps' lead in the Metropolitan Division standings to a single point over the surging Pittsburgh Penguins. The Caps have two games in hand on the Pens, and the two longtime rivals meet once more in 2017-18, in Pittsburgh in the final week of the regular season. The Penguins have won four straight and are 8-1-1 in their last 10 games.

Since returning from the NHL's All-Star break and moving into a more rhythmic portion of the season in terms of the schedule, the Caps have been leaking goals against. And they've lacked an overall sense of consistency for a little more than a month now.

In the nine games they've played since the break, the Capitals have scored a total of 32 goals. An average of 3.56 goals per game should result in more victories than losses, but the Capitals have allowed 36 over the same span, including seven goals against in two of those nine tilts. Washington has won only four of those nine games (4-3-2).

"We're getting stuck in our zone for long periods of time and it seems like we're chasing guys around," said Caps defenseman Brooks Orpik after Saturday's loss. "So maybe we have to switch something there; I don't know. Because there are a handful of shifts where we get stuck for a minute or plus. That tires you out - the way we're chasing the puck, that and obviously we had some bad turnovers throughout the game."

When the Caps dropped a 3-1 decision on home ice to the Carolina Hurricanes on Jan. 11, it ended a season-high five-game winning streak and a season-high 10-game winning streak on Capital One Arena ice. But the Caps have won only two of their last seven home games (2-3-2) and are a middling 6-5-4 in 15 games since.

Most alarmingly, the Caps have allowed 53 goals over that span for an average of 3.53 per game. Only four teams in the league - both New York teams, Montreal and New Jersey - have permitted more goals than Washington over that span, and all four teams have played more games than the Caps during that stretch,

Washington's offense over the same period of time is averaging just over three goals per game (3.13), which should generally result in more victories, save for the team's porous defense and occasional leaky goaltending over the last several weeks.

We're now just over a week away from the NHL's Feb. 26 trade deadline, but without much in the way of salary cap space or attractive trade assets, it's difficult to envision the Capitals being able to make substantive changes to their roster between now and month's end. The Caps might be able to make some minor adds to their depth chart without giving up too much in the way of future assets, but team's best hope is straighten out whatever it is that's currently ailing it.

"These are the players that we have, okay?" said Caps coach Barry Trotz in the aftermath of Saturday's loss. "So the changes can be made as line changes, which we do on a regular basis.

"As a coach, you want a response from your group. That tells you a lot about your group. We have had a response a couple of times this year when we haven't had our best game, and I expect the same thing on the next game."

Trotz was then asked whether he believes the personnel he has is sufficient or whether he might feel a change is necessary in that regard.

"No, it's fine," Trotz replied. "In this league, sometimes you don't dictate that. This is the group that we have, this is the group that we need to win with, and we're going to try to plan to do that. That's what we've tried to do all year. We got off to a little bit of a rocky start, and we sort of got our game in order.

"I look at this game, and we've gotten points in our last five games, other than this game, so we can't be that bad, and I know we aren't as bad as we were tonight."

This has obviously been another in a string of disappointing seasons for the Sabres, who have not reached the Stanley Cup playoffs since 2010-11. But while Buffalo is bringing up the rear in both the Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference standings, the Sabres have also shown they can still be a dangerous and difficult foe on any given night.

Buffalo's last two victories have come at the expense of the two top teams in the Eastern Conference. The Sabres cooled off the Bruins in Boston by a 4-2 count on Feb. 10, and then defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning by a 5-3 score in Buffalo three nights later.

Monday's game against the Capitals concludes a quick, two-game homestand for the Sabres. Buffalo lost a Saturday afternoon affair to the Los Angeles Kings at KeyBank Center, 4-1.