POSTGAME NOTEBOOK: Wild 5, Caps 1

Miles From Our Home - Following another home ice loss on Sunday night to the Minnesota Wild, the Capitals are down to just five more home dates remaining in the 2021-22 regular season. And unless they win all five of those games, they will finish this season with more losses than wins on home ice, doing so for the first time since 2006-07, when Alex Ovechkin was in his sophomore season in the NHL and the Caps finished at 17-17-7 on home ice.

After Sunday's 5-1 setback at the hands of the Minnesota Wild, the Caps are 16-15-5 at Capital One Arena in 2021-22. In each of their last two home games, they've scored one or fewer goals while yielding five or more goals against, a dubious feat they've achieved only once before in franchise history. Way back in the dark days of season one, the Caps lost a 5-1 decision to the Minnesota North Stars on March 20, 1974 and took a 5-0 beating from the Atlanta Flames in their next home game, three nights later.
Perhaps the most exasperating aspect of Washington's home ice woes is that it didn't start this way this season, and it has continued to get much worse.
The Caps actually earned points in 13 of their first 14 home games this season (9-1-4), and on the morning of Dec. 10, they owned the NHL's fourth-best record at home, from a points percentage standpoint (.786). Washington was averaging 3.57 goals per game (seventh best in the League) and was yielding a relatively miserly 2.29 goals against per game (sixth).
Since then however, the Capitals have won only seven of their last 22 games here (7-14-1). That computes to an abysmal points percentage of .341, which ranks 31st in the NHL, ahead of only Arizona (.333). The Caps have scored an average of 2.64 goals per game over those 22 contests, ranking 27th in the League over that span. They've yielded an unsightly average of 3.68 goals against per game, 28th in the NHL.
Since the calendar flipped to 2022, the Caps are 6-12-1 on home ice, with only three of those victories - over Carolina, Seattle and New Jersey - achieved in regulation. They've yielded five or more goals against in seven of 19 home games over that span, doing so in consecutive games twice. Currently, the Capitals have surrendered five or more goals against in four of their last five home games.
Allowing the opposition to put a crooked number on the scoreboard in the first period of a home game is something the Caps did just twice in their first 33 games of the season, once at home and once on the road. Washington ended up getting a point in each of those games, a 4-3 overtime loss to Calgary on Oct. 23 and a 5-4 overtime setback to the Panthers in Florida on Nov. 4.
In their last 36 games, the Caps have allowed multiple goals in the first period 14 times, with a dozen of them coming in their 19 home games over that stretch. Sunday's game against the Wild was the latest - and one of the most egregious - examples.
Minnesota came to town on Sunday night to play the back half of a set of back-to-back games; it earned a 3-1 win over then Hurricanes in Raleigh on Saturday.
The Wild scored on each of its first two shots on net, going 200 feet in a matter of seconds on both of those goals. Minnesota was up 1-0 at the 36-second mark of the first, and it was up 2-0 just 61 seconds later. It had all the offense it would require to win the game before the game was two minutes old. And the Wild entered Sunday's game having allowed a combined total of 15 goals against in its previous nine games. The Minnesota men likely realized they had enough to win at that point; the Wild basically played road hockey the rest of the way and locked the game down.
Beginning at time the Wild took its 2-0 lead at 1:37 of the first, Minnesota managed only five shots on net over the next 31 minutes and 23 seconds of playing time, and only one of the five came from closer than 44 feet away from the Washington net.
Minnesota then put a four-shot flurry on the Washington net in a span of six seconds, scoring on the last of those shots to make it a 3-0 game. The Wild had three goals on 11 shots at that point of the game, and when it scored on its first shot of the third period to go up 4-0, it had four goals on 13 shots.
"Obviously it was a tough start," laments Caps' captain Alex Ovechkin. "We knew we have to play different because they play back-to-back and we have put pressure [on them]. But when you give those chances right away, it's kind of killing momentum. We tried to do our best to bounce back to the game."
Again, the Caps have routinely given up multiple goals in the first period of home games in calendar 2022. That takes the crowd out of the game early, and it gives the opposition a leg up in what had been - for a decade and a half - one of the most difficult road buildings in the NHL.
This One Goes To Eleven - Garnet Hathaway scored Washington's lone goal of the game on a delayed penalty midway through the third period. For Hathaway, the goal is his 11th of the season and it matches his single-season career high, established in his final season in Calgary, when he scored 11 goals in 76 games in 2018-19.
Back In The Saddle - Center Nic Dowd and defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk returned to action on Sunday, each after having missed Washington's previous five games. Dowd logged 11:44 in his return while van Riemsdyk skated 17:18, blocking five Minnesota shots to account for nearly half of the Caps' total of a dozen blocks in the game.
"I felt fine," says van Riemsdyk. "I felt as good as I could have hoped. Obviously, it wasn't the start we wanted there, but as far as everything with the injury, I felt fine. But I would have hoped for a better first game back, for sure."
New 22 - Acquired from Arizona at the NHL trade deadline two weeks ago, veteran forward Johan Larsson made his debut in a Washington sweater on Sunday night against the Wild, the team that drafted him with its second-round pick (56th overall) in the 2010 NHL Draft.
While with the Coyotes, Larsson underwent sports hernia surgery in late January, and he was at the latter stages of his rehab from that ailment at the time of the trade. In his Sunday debut with the Caps, Larsson skated 10:10, including 1:13 of shorthanded ice time. He recorded a pair of hits and was a plus-1.
"I thought he was good," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette of Larsson. "He works hard, he competes. It's hard to get a good evaluation on a game like tonight's, but I thought he did good."
By The Numbers -John Carlson led the Caps with 22:14 in ice time … Ovechkin led the Caps with four shots on net … T. J. Oshie and Lars Eller led Washington with half a dozen shot attempts each … Hathaway led the Caps with four hits … Dowd won nine of 13 draws (69 percent).