POSTGAME NOTEBOOK - Bruins 5, Caps 3

Keep On Pushin' - It took 10 games, but on Monday night at Capital One Arena the Caps ran into a Boston Bruins team that - despite missing a couple key pieces of its own - was good enough to exploit a Washington club playing without two of its top three centers and a top four defenseman, playing one of its best players out of position, and playing with two players who had recently been sitting idle for 10 days.

The result was a 5-3 Boston victory in a game Washington led 3-0 midway through the second and 3-1 headed to the third. Monday's loss was the first the Caps have suffered in regulation this season.
Two nights earlier at the same location, the Caps also lost hold of a 3-0 second period lead and a 3-1 third-period advantage against the Bruins. But on that night, they were able to get two points
Washington was victimized by a couple of bad breaks and a difficult and unfortunate decision in the third period, but perhaps the Caps' primary sin on this night was squeezing its best hockey of the night into a narrow first-period window before reverting to some sins of the recent past over the final 30 minutes or so of the contest.
After John Carlson scored on a Washington power play, there were still 11 and a half minutes remaining in the second period. The Caps mustered only two shots in the rest of the middle frame, one from 134 feet and the other from 92 feet away. They had only six shots on net in the third, when they spent far too much time in their own end and found themselves on the wrong end of a 25-6 disparity in shot attempts at 5-on-5.
"We've got to have more of an attack mindset," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "You've got to keep swinging. If you don't, then you're taking shots."

Carlson lost his footing behind the net on Boston's second goal, and Conor Sheary was trying to hobble off to the bench when the Bruins' Brandon Carlo scored the go-ahead goal, giving the visitors more than enough time and space with which to cash in on those opportunities.
"That wasn't missed coverage, that was a man who was trying to limp off the ice," Laviolette of what would prove to be the game-winning goal. "[Sheary] is a left wing and he should be right in that spot from where [Carlo] shot the puck."
With 11:11 left and Washington leading 3-2, Boston's Trent Frederic challenged Caps winger Tom Wilson to a fight, and the latter acquiesced, realizing his team was in need of a boost, too, at that juncture of the contest. The B's notched the tying tally while Wilson was serving his five-minute sentence, but play continued for several minutes without a whistle after the five minutes was up, keeping both players in the box for more than the five spot.
By the time Wilson and Frederic were finally released, they had been out of action for nearly nine minutes and the Bruins had gone from a goal down to a goal up.
"I think Freddy had a lot to do with it," says Boston coach Bruce Cassidy of his team's win. "The scrap with Wilson kind of got everyone's attention on the bench. That's arguably the toughest guy in the National Hockey League - [Caps defenseman Zdeno Chara] would be in that mix too, obviously - but Freddy stood in there and gave us a bit of a boost. I don't know what it does to their team, but I know it gives us a boost."
Wilson was one of Washington's best and most energized players in Monday's game. He turned in a relentless and beastly shift in the second period, drawing the penalty that produced the power play on which Carlson scored. He was definitely missed in the latter half of the third.
"It gets chippy out there," says Laviolette. "You're playing a team that you're competing with inside your division on back-to-back nights, and guys get under each other's skin a little bit, and that had been going on for the better part of two games. Tom is an important piece to our team, and I appreciate his toughness and his physicality. But we appreciate him on the ice as well.
"But it's tough. Like I said, emotions are running hot out there at different times, and those things happen."
Swingin' Party - For the third time in just 10 games this season, the Caps have experienced a negative swing in standings points from a game in which they owned a multi-goal lead in the second period.
Instead of coming out of Monday's game with two points and leaving Boston with none, the situation was reversed, a negative swing of four points for Washington. Boston salvaged a point out of Saturday's game, rallying late to force overtime, so what should have been a plus-2 situation for the Caps became only a plus-1 game.
Back on Jan. 19 in Pittsburgh, the Caps led 3-1 and 4-2 in the second period of a game against the Penguins, but instead of getting two points and leaving the Pens with none, it was Pittsburgh that picked up a pair of points and the Caps that settled for one in a 5-4 overtime win for the home team.
The Caps have led at some point in all 10 of their games this season, and their 6-1-3 record is solid, especially when considering the amount of adversity they've dealt with in the early going. But not only have they let points slip away in those three games, they've enabled two key rivals to claim points in what most expect will be a tight divisional race over the course of the season.

Turn Around - We wrote in this space in Monday afternoon's "Skate Shavings" entry about the Caps' offensive attack being fueled by an active group of blueliners who are contributing nearly three points a night to Washington's offensive cause in the early going this season.
In Monday's game against Boston, each of the Caps' three goals again featured involvement from the blueline. Chara scored the Caps' first goal at 13:26 of the first, and Nick Jensen sparked Daniel Sprong's second goal of the season just 11 seconds later. John Carlson notched Washington's third goal on a power play in the second period, giving the Caps 10 goals and 29 points from their blueline in the season's first 10 games, the highest rate of defense involvement in team scoring since 1992-93.
With 11 points (four goals, seven assists), Carlson is tied for the league lead in scoring among defensemen.
But the Bruins' blueline brigade turned the table on the Caps the rest of the way. Carlo helped set up Boston's first goal of the night, a David Pastrnak tally at 12:37 of the second period. Blueliners Jakub Zboril and Charlie McAvoy combined to set up Pastrnak again early in the third, and then Jeremy Lauzon made a strong play and issued a sublime backhand feed for the primary helper on Craig Smith's tying goal.
Carlo supplied the go-ahead goal and the eventual game-winner with 2:37 left in the third, giving Boston defensemen a goal and five points on the night, accounting for more than a quarter of the Bruins' defensemen's total of 19 points in a single night.
"I thought keeping pucks alive by our [defense] had a lot to do with it," says Cassidy of his team's win. "Sure enough, Charlie getting up the ice, [Lauzon] making a play, [Carlo] - we just got a little more involved.
"Washington collapses a little bit. We talked about this in the pre-scout the other night that there would be some opportunity for our [defense] to be involved. There was a play [Saturday] night - we even specifically talked to [Carlo] - where [the Caps] were four low and one guy in the slot. Brandon got a little too low in terms of outside the dots and kind of an off-net shot. So we talked to [him] about, 'If you're going to go down, get yourself in good ice or stay high,'-like McAvoy and Zboril did; that was a set play - or get down there to be shot-ready.
"Good for them for making the adjustment. [The Caps] got a couple goals from their [defense]; [Chara] got a goal, Carlson got one. You need that in today's NHL."
Big Boss Man - Laviolette's 15 points through the Capitals' first 10 games of the season is tied for the most by a Washington head coach through their first 10 games with the franchise. He joins Jim Schonefeld (7-2-1 after taking over in midseason of the 1993-94 season) and Ron Wilson (7-2-1 at the start of the 1997-98 campaign) as the only other Caps coaches with as many points in his first 10 games.
The NHL record for most points for a head coach through their first 10 games with a franchise was established nearly a century ago and is going to be a tough one to break. David Gill went 9-0-1 (19 points) in his first 10 games behind the bench of the original Ottawa Senators during the 1926-27 season. Gill coached the Sens to a Stanley Cup championship that season, the first of his three seasons as Ottawa's head coach, which made up the sum total of his coaching career in the League.
By The Numbers - Carlson led the Caps with 23:46 in ice time … Alex Ovechkin led Washington with five shots on net and seven shot attempts … Garnet Hathaway led the Caps with three hits … Carl Hagelin paced the Caps with four blocked shots.