POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Pens 5, Caps 4 (OT)

The One That Got Away - In the wake of a 5-4 overtime loss to the Penguins in Pittsburgh on Tuesday night, the Caps are back from a four-game road trip to start the 2020-21 NHL season, the longest season-opening journey in franchise history.

If you look at the standings, it shows the Caps with a 2-0-2 record, a good start after almost a week on the road. It's only the third time in franchise history that Washington has earned points in each of its first four road games in a season; the Caps were a perfect 4-0-0 in their first four road games of 1991-92 and matched the feat in their first four games away from the District in 2015-16.
Coming home with six of eight possible points is a plus, but what's sticking in the Caps' collective craw this morning is not just that they could have had seven or eight points from the trip, but that they certainly could have also kept rival Pittsburgh from picking up four points in these last two games.
While Washington started the season with a pair of wins in Buffalo, Pittsburgh dropped a pair of multi-goal decisions in Philadelphia. The Pens were desperate for points coming into Sunday's matinee match with the Caps, and they got two in a 4-3 shootout win when Washington was unable to sustain a swift start and unable to maintain or build upon a pair of one-goal leads in the second.
In Tuesday's finale, the Caps roared out to a 3-1 lead in the first; it was the fourth time in as many games that the Pens yielded multiple goals in the first period. Once again, the Caps could build on or sustain a strong start. After failing to convert on a 3-on-0 rush early in the middle frame, Washington surrendered three goals in the second period, all of them on special teams.
Most damning was a 3-on-5 shorthanded goal against from Teddy Blueger, the first 3-on-5 goal the Caps have allowed in nearly 13 years, since they were victimized by Columbus' Rick Nash on Feb. 5, 2008 in Ohio's capital city. The Caps prevailed on that night, winning 4-3 on an Alex Ovechkin overtime goal.
Tuesday's game was 4-4 headed to the third, and Pittsburgh was down to just four defensemen for the remainder of the night after both Juuso Riikola and Marcus Pettersson departed in the second with upper body injuries. This was an opportunity for the Caps to reassert themselves in the contest, to wear down an already depleted Pittsburgh defense with some sustained offensive zone time.
"It was an opportunity to test ourselves after a period that nothing really went our way," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette of Tuesday's third period. "I was looking for a different response. I don't think we took control of that period the way we needed to.
"It's tight out there defensively; there is not a lot of room. But that's the opportunity to make the right decisions with the puck coming through the neutral zone and on entry [into the attack zone], and it just seemed like we turned it over a lot, and it came back the other way. It was difficult to establish zone time and start to get some rhythm back to what we're doing. It's frustrating."
There was no killer instinct from the Caps and little in the way of puck possession and offensive zone time in the third and overtime. In the end it was Washington rather than Pittsburgh that looked fatigued from chasing the puck in the final frame, a by-product of winning only four of the game's final 23 face-offs for an anemic success rate of 17.4% over that span.
"We did it to ourselves today," says Caps center Lars Eller. "I think we played so well up until [Evgeny Kuznetsov's goal] in the second when we had a 4-2 lead. We played well, and then we just lose 5 or 10 percent of the execution in our game and we get sloppy. We don't execute passes. We get scored on shorthanded. And we take some penalties we shouldn't be taking, and we just give them a little bit and then they're right back in the game, and then it's game. So today we really paid for our mistakes and hopefully we'll learn from it, because we really paid for that today."
Pulling six of eight points in a four-game trip is a significant positive, especially given a short training camp, a new coach, and no preseason games. But many of the problems that have plagued the Capitals for the last 13 months are quite apparent. They still take too many penalties and take them at inopportune times in the game, they still display Jekyll and Hyde tendencies from period-to-period and shift-to-shift within games, and they are still abysmal on the face-off dot. Smoothing out those issues is going to take some time, and the process is still in progress.
The standings show the Caps with a two-point lead over Pittsburgh, but that lead could have been as many as eight points. But in a shortened season of 56 four-point games, the Caps gifted the Pens some early points when they could have left them in a deep early-season hole.
Five-On-Five Alive - Seeking to generate more sustained time in the attack zone, Caps coach Peter Laviolette tweaked his forward lines a bit going into Tuesday's game in Pittsburgh against the Penguins. Richard Panik and Lars Eller skated with T.J. Oshie on their right, and Daniel Sprong rode shotgun for Jakub Vrana and Kuznetsov while the first and fourth lines were left in their familiar state.
The early returns were good. Eller scored the game's first goal with help from both linemates at 4:55 of the first, and Kunzetsov netted his first of the season at 8:16 of the second with both linemates assisting.
"Lars has been playing real well," says Laviolette. "T.J. has been steady, and I thought Richard had a real good camp and he has had a real good start to his year. I thought they were good. They scored a big goal for us."
At night's end, all six forwards on those two lines were on the positive side of the puck possession metrics, so we could see these combinations remain intact for Friday's home opener against Buffalo.
Sprong's assist was his first point as a member of the Capitals, and it came against the team that drafted him in the second round (46th overall) in the 2015 NHL Draft. Sprong debuted with the Penguins as a teenager in 2015-16, scoring a couple of goals in 18 games.
Two For Tuesday Tom - Skating on the top line with Nicklas Backstrom and Alex Ovechkin, Caps right wing Tom Wilson continued his hot start with a pair of late first-period goals that came less than three minutes apart.
Dating back to Friday's game in Buffalo, Wilson has now had a hand in five of the Capitals' last eight goals at 5-on-5, scoring three - including the game-winner on Friday - and setting up two others.
Crooked Numbers - Pittsburgh has yielded multiple goals in the first period of each of its first four games this season. The Pens have surrendered 10 first-period goals this season; no other club in the league has yielded more than five.
"I wish I had an explanation for the start," says Pens coach Mike Sullivan. "It wasn't very good obviously, and our players knew it and I told them that between periods: 'We've got to have a will to win here, we've got to be a hungry team.' For whatever reason, we didn't have it in the first period."
By The Numbers - For the fourth time in as many games, Washington went shorthanded more times (three) than it went on the power play (two) in Tuesday's game … John Carlson led the Caps with 22:10 in ice time … Kuznetsov led the Caps with six shots on net and eight shot attempts … The Caps outhit the Pens 54-37 on the night, Wilson leading the way with 10 … Carlson, Brenden Dillon, Dmitry Orlov and Carl Hagelin each blocked two shots to lead the Caps … Kuznetsov won six of 10 face-offs (60%).