Entering the game, the Caps led the NHL in aggregate time with the lead, but they spent most of Tuesday's tilt playing from behind. Anaheim took a 1-0 lead on its second shot of the night.
From the half-wall in his own end of the ice, Troy Terry moved the puck to Ryan Getzlaf near the Anaheim line. Getzlaf put the puck off the opposite wall to space - high in the Washington end - where Ducks defenseman Cam Fowler was the first to get to it. When Fowler arrived on the scene, the puck was just above the left circle. Fowler wound up and one-timed it, and it went underneath Vitek Vanecek's left pad and in, catching a piece of the netminder's pad on its way through.
Fowler's goal came at 3:32 of the first period, Getzlaf recorded his 1,000th career NHL point on the play, and Terry extended his season-opening point streak to 15 straight games as well.
Just 78 seconds later, Washington appeared to pull even when Nick Jensen's seeing-eye wrist shot from the right point got through traffic and behind Ducks goaltender John Gibson. But Anaheim issued a successful coach's challenge, alleging that the Caps were offside on the play. Video review showed that Washington winger Garnet Hathaway was in just ahead of the play, and the score remained 1-0.
Vanecek made an excellent save on Getzlaf in the back half of the first, keeping the Caps within a goal. Washington wasn't great in the game's first 20 minutes, but first periods have not been the Caps' forte during the life of the four-game winning streak they brought with them to the West Coast.
On this night though, the Caps couldn't get started in the middle period, either. For the game's first 40 minutes, they appeared to be stuck in the mud. Passes were in skates rather than on the tape, and they were rarely able to get the puck moving north, rarely able to play with speed or inclined to manufacture much in the way of dangerous or sustained shifts in the offensive zone.
Vanecek made three critical stops in short succession in the penultimate minute of the second period, the first two coming on a two-on-none rush. He denied Terry and then Mason McTavish on that rush, losing his stick on the second of those stops. Still sans stick, Vanecek then thwarted Isac Lundestrom from the top of the paint, enabling the Caps to head into the third period still just a goal down.