"Just take advantage of it," says Caps winger Chandler Stephenson of the impending homestand. "Try to get back to our game and our team identity and what we're good at, and what makes us good. I think over the first 11 games, it's something that has gotten away from us at times in games. It's a matter of finding that consistency."
The Caps have won three of their last eight games (3-4-1), but have just one regulation win in that span. They started the season 2-2-1 while facing five straight playoff teams from last season, and they're now six games into a stretch of eight straight games against non-playoff teams from 2017-18, going 3-2-1 in those half dozen contests.
On most nights, the Caps play well for long stretches but they've been struggling to do so over the full 60 minutes on most nights. They owned leads in the latter half of two of their four regulation losses, but they've also dug their way out of multi-goal deficits to earn points in each of their overtime/shootout losses.
Washington has yielded 42 goals in its 11 games to date, and its average of 3.82 goals against per game ranks 28th in the NHL. Of the bottom six teams in the league in terms of goals against, the Caps own the best record, largely because they also average 3.82 goals per game, second in the league.
Washington comes into Saturday's game stinging from its most recent setback, a 6-4 loss to the Canadiens in Montreal on Thursday night. Down 3-1 early in the second period of that game, the Caps rallied for three unanswered goals in a span of about six minutes in the second period, and they took a 4-3 lead into the third.
At the start of the third, the Caps expertly killed off a Montreal power play, and then they nursed their one-goal lead into the latter stages of the third. But Washington unraveled late; shortly after the Caps' only power play chance of the night failed to produce as much as a shot on net, the lead and then the game and any chance at coming home with a point slipped away as well.
Montreal scored three times in the final 184 seconds of the game, stunning the Caps and leaving them on the wrong side of a 6-4 score, and still without consecutive wins to this point of the season.