POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Blues 4, Caps 1

Blue Monday - On the strength of an Alex Ovechkin power-play goal at 7:50 of the first period, the Caps jumped out to an early 1-0 lead on Monday night against the St. Louis Blues. Washington was able to nurse that lead to the first intermission, but it turned out to be fool's gold.

Despite that early advantage, the Caps didn't play well at all in the first, relying on Phoenix Copley to wall off a number of strong St. Louis scoring attempts. Washington's second periods have been stellar for most of the season, but not so much of late. St. Louis took control by scoring three five-on-five goals in a span of just 4:42 - a stretch in which Washington was on the power play for two of those minutes - early in the second and the Blues cruised to a 4-1 win over the Caps.

The loss was Washington's second to the Blues in less than two weeks, and in both games the Caps let an early lead slip while yielding four unanswered goals. St. Louis outscored the Caps 7-2 at even strength and 9-3 overall in two meetings this season.
"Every challenge, every game is a little bit of a different story," says Caps coach Todd Reirden. "For us, that wasn't good enough tonight from an execution standpoint, and they were better. They deserved the game, and rightfully so, they ended up with the game."
For the better part of the last two months, the Caps' five-on-five game has sustained them. But they've now fallen victim to the rat-a-tat-tat of a string of four or more unanswered goals three times in their last eight games (3-3-2), twice against St. Louis, and with the majority of those goals coming at even strength.
"It's a little bit of the ebbs and flows of the season," says Reirden, "and certain times things happen within the game that can take the opposition out of it, and then other times they can get life from situations that maybe they shouldn't.

"To me, we just weren't sharp at our execution with the puck, and we gave them too many opportunities. Regardless of us being ahead or not, between the first two periods we gave them way too many opportunities. They're a good team that is playing hard. We've had a tough time with them twice now, and they've been playing better hockey as of late. They're scratching and clawing to get in the playoffs. We weren't able to execute the way we needed to to have success in this league, and it cost us."
The Caps have held to a single goal in consecutive games for the second time this season; they lost consecutive home games to Columbus (2-1 on Nov. 9) and Arizona (4-1 on Nov. 11) early on.
Grand Game -Caps defenseman Brooks Orpik skated in the 1,000th game of his NHL career on Monday against the Blues, becoming the 330th player in league history and the 14th oldest (38 years, 110 days) to reach the milestone. Orpik is the first of those 330 players to get to a grand without scoring as many as 20 goals during his career; he has netted 17.
More than 45 percent of Orpik's time on ice over the last two seasons has been spent skating alongside a first- or second-year defenseman, and Orpik's average of 3:13 per night in shorthanded ice time is tied for seventh in the league. Game No. 1,000 came just over 16 years after game No. 1 for Orpik, who debuted on Dec. 10, 2002 with the Penguins, playing against the Maple Leafs in Toronto.
The Caps will celebrate Orpik's achievement before Friday's home game against the New York Islanders.
Ovechkin now has 238 career power-play goals, pushing ahead of Hockey Hall of Famer Brendan Shanahan for sole possession of sixth place on the all-time ledger.
Power Move -Ovechkin's goal was his 33rd of the season and his team-leading ninth power-play goal of the season. The goal was the 640th of his NHL career, tying him with Hockey Hall of Famer Dave Andreychuk for 14th place on the NHL's all-time list.

Monday's goal was also Ovechkin's first power-play goal in exactly a month, ending a dry spell of 13 games. His previous power-play goal was scored against the Hurricanes in Raleigh on Dec. 14. After scoring six power-play goals in his first 14 games this season, Ovechkin now has three extra-man strikes in his last 31 games.
Ovechkin leads the NHL with 24 goals at even strength.
Westward Woes -The Capitals have dipped to 8-8-2 against Western Conference opponents on the season with a dozen games remaining against the West. The caps are now 1-5-1 in their last seven games against non-conference foes.
Gimme Three Steps - With their win over Washington, the Blues extended their winning streak to three, the team's longest winning run of the season. Even more remarkably, the Blues were the only team in the league without a three-game winning streak to this point.
At this semi-advanced stage of the regular season, teams in the nether region of the standings are generally seen as bad or flawed teams, given the sample size of slightly more than half a season. But as we pointed out on Monday's edition of "Two-Man Advantage," we see the Blues as an underachieving team rather than a poor team.
Whether the Blues can climb back into the Western Conference playoff picture remains to be seen. The Blues pulled to within three points of the final Western playoff position with Monday's win, but they'll still need to claw their way past a quartet of teams to get there. And the Blues' schedule is road heavy in the second half; they'll play 23 of their last 38 games on the road.
By The Numbers -John Carlson led the Caps with 24:23 in ice time … Six different Caps skaters had three shots on net to tie for the team lead … T.J. Oshie led the Caps with six shot attempts … Matt Niskanen led the Capitals with five hits … Dmitry Orlov led the Caps with three blocked shots … Evgeny Kuznetsov won eight of 13 draws (62 percent).