POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Rangers 4, Caps 1

Caught Short In The Long Run - Way back in 1983-84, the Washington Capitals won six straight road games to establish a franchise record. Nearly three decades later in the 2010-11 season, the Caps managed to match that mark. In the decade since, the Caps have strung together five straight road wins on half a dozen different occasions, but they've never been able to notch that sixth straight win on the road.

Thursday's game against the Rangers in New York is the latest example.
Coming off a week away from game action, the Capitals couldn't keep up with the Blueshirts on Thursday night at Madison Square Garden. The Caps didn't play poorly, but they didn't have the jump or the energy the Rangers had either, and their failure to execute came back to bite them on a couple of occasions, too. The end result was a 4-1 setback and the end of another road winning streak at five games.
Just after the midpoint of the opening period, Mika Zibanejad staked the Rangers to a 1-0 lead, taking a drop pass from Alexis Lafreniere and drilling a shot that got through the five-hole of Caps goalie Ilya Samsonov.
Washington wasn't able to do anything with a pair of power plays in between that Zibanejad goal and the next Rangers goal, and though the Caps did generate a fair amount of chances - and more shots (37) than they've managed in any game in the last two months - they weren't able to create or generate much in the way of second chance opportunities.
In the midst of a stellar season in which he has won 25 of 32 starts, New York netminder Igor Shesterkin showed why he will be in the Vezina Trophy conversation this season, a year after he finished fifth in Calder Trophy balloting. Shesterkin gobbled up everything sent in his direction.
When Lafreniere scored on a deflection with 1:12 left in the second - exploiting Washington's failure to clear the zone - the Rangers were able to take a 2-0 lead into the third. The Caps opened the third with another power play, but they weren't able to cut into the New York lead. That loomed even larger when Chris Kreider took advantage of another failed zone clear to make it a 3-0 game ahead of the seven-minute mark of the third, and it gave the top Rangers line a "hat trick;" each member of that line scored, accounting for the first three goals of the game.
For the Caps, the lone highlight of the night came in the game's penultimate minute when Alex Ovechkin spoiled Shesterkin's shutout bid, converting an Evgeny Kuznetsov feed and allowing Washington to avoid its first road shutout of the season.
Ovechkin's goal was his 32nd of the season and the 762nd goal of his NHL career, moving him to within four goals of Jaromir Jagr (766) for third place on the League's all-time goals ledger.
Back In The Saddle Again - On the good news front, the Caps got a pair pf players back from injury-related absences in Thursday's game. Right wing T.J. Oshie returned to game action for the first time since suffering an upper body injury in a Jan. 15 game against the Islanders in New York and blueliner Justin Schultz returned to the lineup following a one-game absence because of a lower body injury.
"I felt a little tired, if I'm being honest," says Oshie. "It's been a long time off the ice; I haven't seen it a lot really the whole season. But honestly, I felt like my timing and reach were - for the most part - a lot better than I expected them to be. Obviously, that game shape is not quite there, the stopping and the starting. I had a shift in the third where I was kind of the low center man, and I ended up getting beaten on that play really from just lack of battles and stuff like that. But better than I thought, and I'm just really happy to be back with the guys."
Oshie has endured a difficult season to date; Thursday marked just the 19th time he has suited up in Washington's first 53 games this season. He played the first seven games of the season, but has not been able to stay healthy and in the lineup for more than six games in a row since, and he has been sidelined on five separate occasions for a variety of injuries and illnesses.
"It's been real frustrating," says Oshie. "A bunch of things that were really out of my control - a blocked shot with a broken foot, and then COVID right into the flu. And then this last thing has been something that I've been dealing with and everything just went the wrong way.
"It's been frustrating; I've never had a year like this. I've had some big injuries; I've had a spiral fracture of one of those two bones in your leg. A lot of these things - for the most part - once you're healed, you're healed. A broken foot? Boom. Once you can get your foot in a skate, great. You're good. It's just been some other things, and some unlucky bounces for me.
"But like I said, I couldn't be happier. I shouldn't be smiling after that type of loss, but I'm so happy just to be back with the guys and back in the room, and to be on the ice battling again."
Milestone Men - A pair of former Capitals - one a player and one an executive - achieved significant milestones on Thursday night elsewhere around the League.
Playing for the Islanders against the Sharks in San Jose, defenseman Zdeno Chara - who spent last season with Washington - played in his 1,652nd career NHL game to move one ahead of Chris Chelios (1,651) for the top spot all-time for games played by a defenseman. Now in his 24th NHL season, Chara will celebrate his 45th birthday in less than a month.
Chara is now tied with Mark Recchi (1,652) for seventh on the NHL's all-time games played list, and he trails only Florida's Joe Thornton (1,704) among active players.
Meanwhile in Nashville, Predators general manager David Poile marked 3,200 games as a GM in the League, including regular season (2,963 games) and playoffs (237). Poile served as the Capitals' general manager from 1982-1997, helping to lead the team to 14 straight playoff appearances during that span, and doing so after the team missed out on the postseason in each of the eight mostly miserable seasons of its NHL existence. Poile then went on to become the only general manager the Predators have ever known, taking over in that role almost immediately after his dismissal in Washington in the spring of 1997.
By The Numbers -John Carlson led the Caps with 23:06 in ice time … Ovechkin and Kuznetsov led the Caps with five shots on net each, and Ovechkin led the way with nine shot attempts … Martin Fehervary and Nic Dowd had three hits each to lead the Caps … Trevor van Riemsdyk led Washington with three blocked shots … Dowd won eight of nine draws (89 percent) and Oshie won five of seven (71 percent).