POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Jets 3, Caps 0

Armed With An Empty Gun -Playing their 64th game of the 2019-20 NHL regular season on Thursday night in Winnipeg, the Caps put a total of 34 pucks on Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, but he stopped them all. Hellebuyck's fifth shutout of the season marked the second time the Caps have put up a goose egg this season; they were also blanked by the same 3-0 score on Dec. 16 against the Blue Jackets.

Jets defenseman Dmitry Kulikov supplied Hellebuyck with all the offense he would require on this night when he netted his second goal of the season on a slapshot from the left point at 6:33 of the first. Caps goalie Ilya Samsonov played well in his own right, but lost a second straight road decision after winning 10 straight road decisions at the outset of his NHL career. Washington hasn't given the rookie netminder much with which to work; the Caps have scored just two goals for him in those two starts.
Winnipeg's Kyle Connor scored at 7:20 of the third to make it 2-0, and Mark Scheifele's empty-netter closed out the scoring for the night. The Jets lost top-six forward Patrik Laine to a lower body injury early in the game, but Winnipeg's top six still accounted for all of the team's offense in Thursday's win, as it did on Tuesday when the Caps edged the Jets 4-3 in a shootout in the front end of a home-and-home set between the two clubs.
"Every game gets a little bit tougher here," says Caps coach Todd Reirden, "especially when you're playing against teams that are scratching and clawing for points as we are. We get into a situation where their top line is one of the top combinations in the league. They get last change, we get into some unfavorable matchups, and they're able to score the second goal.

"That's something we've got to find, four lines that can defend well enough and still create offense, and three [defense] pairs that can do that."
Hellebuyck's whitewash of Washington was his fifth clean sheet of the season, one shy of his single-season career high of six, established in 2017-18 when he rolled up a remarkable 44-11-9 record and was the runner-up for the Vezina Trophy.
Road Worriers - Throughout this season, the Caps have been the NHL's best road team. They faced a road-heavy October slate but handled it with aplomb, roaring out of the gates with a gaudy 10-1-1 record in their first dozen games away from the District.
But Thursday's loss to the Jets was the Caps' fourth straight setback on the road, their longest such slide of the season. Although they still own an impressive 21-10-1 road record and have played better away from Capital One Arena than at home this season, they are now a more pedestrian 11-9-0 in their last 20 road contests.
Power Outage - Power play opportunities have been difficult to come by for the Capitals recently. Heading into Thursday's game with the Jets in Winnipeg, Washington had precisely one extra-man opportunity in three of its previous four games.
In Thursday's contest against the Jets, Washington fell down by a goal early and had to kill a lengthy Winnipeg two-man advantage of 115 seconds in duration in order to stay within a goal of the Jets midway through the first period.
Samsonov kept the Caps within a goal for the game's first 35 minutes, until the Caps finally went on their first power play of the game. Washington had three extra-man opportunities on Thursday against the Jets, and they came within a tight span of 6 minutes and 5 seconds of playing time, two of them at the tail end of the second and the other one early in the third.
Washington put six shots on net during its six minutes with the man advantage - all while the Jets were still clinging to a 1-0 lead - but it could not convert on what was its best chance to get even on the scoreboard.

"Obviously we've got some new personnel where it's still a work in progress," says Washington winger Tom Wilson, noting the addition of newly acquired Ilya Kovalchuk to the team's extra-man mix. "We had some good looks, and you obviously want to convert on them. But especially the second unit is going to take a few games, and hopefully we can iron out the details, and I think it can be a pretty dangerous one when we get rolling.
"The compete was there, I think. It's a tough building to come into and get a win, and they had a good goalie for sure."
Flawed February - The Caps played a dozen games in the month of February, and only faced one set of back-to-back contests in the year's shortest month, but wound up with a subpar 4-7-1 mark for the month, their first sub-.500 month - excluding April - of the regular season since they struggled through January of 2019 with a 3-6-3 mark.
This season marks the Caps' first time under what passes for .500 in the modern NHL since they turned in a 6-7-1 record in February of 2012. From the perspective of points percentage, Washington hasn't endured a worse month of February since Alex Ovechkin's rookie season of 2005-06 when it went 2-4-0 in a six-game February slate that was shortened by the NHL's participation in the Olympics that season.
By The Numbers - Dmitry Orlov led the Capitals with 23:28 in ice time … Lars Eller and Alex Ovechkin led the Caps with four shots on net each, and Eller led Washington with eight shot attempts … Wilson led the Caps with three hits … John Carlson led the Caps with three blocked shots … Evgeny Kuznetsov won 12 of 15 face-offs in the game (80 percent).