It took 60 games, but the Washington Capitals are now sitting with their first losing streak of at least three games in duration this season. In the fourth game of a five-game homestand, the Caps dropped a 3-1 decision to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday afternoon at Capital One Arena.
Alex Ovechkin scored Washington’s only goal of the game, getting on the board at 16:01 of the third. Ovechkin’s goal was his fifth in five games and is No. 884 of his NHL career. He is now just 11 goals shy of surpassing Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL record of 894 career goals.
Washington won the opener of the homestand with a convincing 7-3 victory over Edmonton last Sunday, one of its best overall 60-minute efforts of the season. But after taking Monday off and playing every other day since, the Caps have not played with a lead at any point in their last 180 minutes of hockey, and they’ve managed to score a grand total of just four goals while losing to Calgary, St. Louis and Tampa Bay, respectively.
“The Edmonton game was great,” says Washington winger Tom Wilson. “We came off a high for sure. We were making a lot of plays; the group looked great. But that being said, there are going to be ups and downs. We’ve got an experienced group in here, so there’s going to be no panic, but I think there’s going to be a little bit of looking at each other and saying, ‘Let’s go, we’ve got to get the next one,’ and move forward from there and put this in the rear view.”
Washington limited the Lightning to just 19 shots on net, and the Bolts netted just one of their three goals on Saturday at 5-on-5.
“I thought it was a good hockey game,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “Checking wise, I thought we did enough to win the game. I didn't think there was much [offense] either way, so I thought it was pretty tight out there. I thought maybe the only other thing [we could have done better] was just a little bit better with the puck. And obviously, to be able to make a play to finish some of those [chances] earlier than the one late in the game would be my only real complaint.
“Special teams plays a huge part, but they're as good a team as there is in this league, without a doubt. Having seen them now three times, the way they're built, the elite players that they have on their roster, their goaltender, they've got every box checked.”
Coming off consecutive losses in which they started slowly in both games, the Caps ran into some first-period adversity on Saturday afternoon.
Jakob Chychrun appeared to have scored on a point shot early in the frame, but the Lightning issued a successful coach’s challenge, correctly alleging that Chychrun had played the puck with a high stick prior to the goal.
The Caps also took three penalties in the first frame against one of the League’s most lethal power plays. They killed the first two of those penalties with aplomb, but the third time was the charm for the Bolts; Mitchell Chaffee buried a shot from in tight on a Tampa Bay power play at 17:11 of the first to give the Lightning the game’s first lead; they kept it for the remainder of the afternoon.
Facing arguably the NHL’s best goaltender in Andrej Vasilevskiy, the Caps didn’t test him much early in the contest, but three first-period penalty-killing missions had something to do with that.
Early in the second, Aliaksei Protas got mostly behind the Tampa Bay defense, and he got in on Vasilevskiy on a partial breakaway, but the Lightning netminder was able to set that shot aside. The stop loomed larger when Gage Goncalves took a Nick Paul feed from the half wall and scored on a snipe of a shot through traffic from the high slot. Goncalves’ goal made it a 2-0 game at 6:08 of the second.
Less than a minute elapsed between the Vasilevskiy save on Protas and the Goncalves goal.
The two sides played scoreless hockey for almost the next 30 minutes of playing time, until Ovechkin found a puck in the slot on a broken play and whipped it past Vasilevskiy to spoil what would have been his fifth shutout of the season.
But the Caps couldn’t keep the Lightning netminder from recording his 29th victory of the season, and Brandon Hagel sealed it with an empty-net goal in the final minute of the contest. Saturday’s victory was the eighth in a row for the Lightning, who own the League’s longest current winning streak.
The Bolts have outscored opponents by a combined total of 34-13 during the life of their winning streak.
“Actually, it’s a pretty confident group right now,” says Lightning coach Jon Cooper. “And a lot of it is probably not for the reasons [you think]. People think of the Tampa Bay Lightning as scoring a bunch of goals, but we’re doing it with defense. That’s been the key for us in this little stretch, and it couldn’t be coming at a better time as we’re going down the stretch here and trying to solidify a playoff spot. So, hopefully we can keep this going.”
