POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Flyers 3, Caps 1

Sin City - For the first time in 283 postseason games in franchise history, the Capitals got through an entire game without needing to break the seal on their penalty killing outfit in Monday's round robin game against the Lightning. In their next game against the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday, they promptly made up for the lack of penalty killing reps.

With the two teams playing 4-vs-4 early in the first, the Caps started an afternoon off futility when Tom Wilson was sent off for boarding Philly's Ivan Provorov. That infraction kicked off a parade of Washington penalties that stretched across much of the first 40 minutes, keeping the Caps' offense in dry dock for much of that time.

Philadelphia cruised to a 3-1 victory, leaving the Caps with no upward mobility in the round robin standings with one game remaining, on Sunday against Boston.

Washington's penalty killed off all six Philadelphia power plays in the game. But the Caps mustered only 11 shots on net at even strength, few of them threatening or memorable. The Caps collected their lone goal on a Travis Boyd tip of Carl Hagelin's shot just ahead of the midpoint of the third period, a dozen seconds after Laughton's second goal of the game gave Philadelphia a 3-0 lead.

Washington never gave itself a chance in this one. In taking a slew of penalties - all of them of the unnecessary variety - the Caps essentially slashed their own tires before heading out on a long drive.

"We have to handle ourselves a little bit better emotionally," says Caps center Nic Dowd. "I think seven penalties in that game for us, and it takes away from our 5-on-5 game, and that's where our team is at its best. It gives us a chance to draw penalties and put our high caliber guys on the ice to score goals. And also when we're playing 5-on-5, we can roll all four lines, and I think we have a lot of depth, and that plays to our advantage."

"We did such a good job the prior game, staying out of the box," says Caps coach Todd Reirden. "We used our skating to check, and that wasn't the case today. We take too many penalties, and it really was a game that was out of rhythm right from the get-go."

Hunger Games - For nearly a full week now, many of us have been sating our hockey hunger with daily banquets of games from noon to midnight and later, at least here on the East Coast. Watching dozens of these games this week, one thing is crystal clear: it's difficult to pretend your house in on fire when it's not.

Teams playing in the "play-in" series - those seeded from 5-12 in the NHL's return to play - are literally playing for their continued existence. Lose three games and you're headed home, the bubble days are over and it's instant off-season. The intensity, the urgency and the hunger are evident on every shift.

Contrast that to the round-robin games featuring the 1-4 seeds in both the Eastern and Western Conferences, and the difference is evident. Lose three games, and the effects are minimal. You'll still be starting a best-of-seven series against an opponent to be determined later, and given the parity in the NHL, how much difference is there really from one playoff opponent to another?

Under normal NHL circumstances, home ice advantage in the postseason is highly desirable. Teams want to play as many games in their own arena and in front of their own fans as possible. But in this year's bubble playoffs, that "home ice advantage" doesn't include playing in front of your fans, doesn't include playing in your arena, doesn't include going to your own locker room before and after games and between periods, and doesn't include sleeping in your own bed.

As the Caps, the Boston Bruins, the Dallas Stars and the St. Louis Blues have shown this week, it's not easy to manufacture false urgency. Playoff losses are typically weighty, because each one brings a team closer to its mortality. That's not the case for the round robin clubs.

"It shouldn't be that hard to manufacture it. These count as playoff games, playoff goals, playoff points, whatever you want. And then these [games] are obviously going to affect seeding and what teams you are going to play in the first round. I think the biggest thing isn't necessarily always the outcome in these types of games; I think it's that you want your team playing well going into what will be a best-of-seven."

Late in the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons, the Caps went down the stretch of the regular season with little to play for. They had all but sewn up their division, the Eastern Conference, the Presidents' Trophy, home ice advantage and virtually all the perks available to them for continued excellence over an 82-game span. But they still had a handful of regular season games to get through before they could start playing the games that really mattered to them, the playoff games.

Watching most of the round robin games this week has reminded some of us of those late-season games with no weight or gravity to them.

"The point of these games is obviously for the seeding," says Caps right wing T.J. Oshie. "But for us personally, we need to get our game to where it needs to be. We need to use these games to put ourselves in situations to mentally figure out how to be mentally strong out there, how to get our game to a certain level. Definitely it's harder to do that when you can lose three [games] and you're still in the playoffs. But I think we just have to do a better job of getting our game to that next level. Luckily, we've got one more to try to do that."

Starting next week, the urgency, the intensity and the hunger will need to be there for all eight of the round robin teams, because that's when they'll be going up against the teams that have been firmly in that mode for more than a week already.

By The Numbers - Carolina limited the Caps to 18 shots on net twice in a seven-game playoff series in 2019, but the Caps' total of 17 shots on goal in Thursday's game against the Flyers was their lowest single-game total for a playoff game since April 12, 2012, when the defending Stanley Cup champion Bruins held the Caps to 17 shots in a 1-0 B's win in overtime in Boston … Oshie and Jakub Vrana led the Caps with three shots on net each … Alex Ovechkin led Washington with nine shot attempts, accounting for a quarter of the Caps' total of just 36 in the game … Sixteen of the Caps' 18 skaters had at least one hit as the team combined for 42 bodychecks, led by six each from Ovechkin and Ilya Kovalchuk … Radko Gudas led the Caps with three blocked shots … Washington won only 20 of 60 (33.3%) face-offs in the game, and none of the six Caps who took draws finished at or above 50 percent on the afternoon.