Coming off one of their best performances of the season on Thursday against Toronto, the Caps were hopeful of bankrolling that effort into another one in Saturday afternoon’s homestand finale against the Detroit Red Wings. But the Caps’ start wasn’t sufficient and Detroit bested them in front of the nets at both ends of the ice in a 5-2 loss at Capital One Arena, Washington’s fourth in its last five games(1-3-1).
“I think simply put, just our start,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery, asked about the difference between Thursday and Saturday’s game. “We just weren’t able to get through the neutral zone, weren’t able to do enough things forecheck-wise, and we lost momentum early in the hockey game.
“I thought we were still okay coming out of the first and at the end of the first; we started to figure out, ‘Okay, this is a whole different animal than how the game went two days ago,’ so I thought we were okay going into the intermission. And we just made a few mistakes, which really put us behind the eight-ball on the scoreboard, and then we’re chasing it.”
As Carbery alluded to, Saturday’s game began inauspiciously for the Caps, who fell behind 1-0 at 1:05 of the first when John Leonard – older brother of Washington’s Ryan Leonard – scored his first goal as a member of the Red Wings and his first NHL goal since March 20, 2024 when he tallied in Dallas as a member of the Arizona Coyotes. From the slot, Leonard put back the rebound of a Simon Edvinsson shot to stake Detroit to an early lead.
Saturday’s game comprised Detroit’s “Mothers’ Trip,” so the Leonard boys and the van Riemsdyk brothers both had their moms in the house on Saturday, and the Leonards had their entire family in attendance to see John’s goal. He picked up an assist in his previous game on Wednesday against Utah.
“I don’t know the exact number, but me and Ryan’s whole side [of the family] and then a couple of in-laws, so it was really cool,” says John Leonard, who is six years older than Ryan.
Detroit had the better of every aspect of the game in a fast-paced first frame. The Wings had the Caps chasing them and the puck for most of the frame, and Logan Thompson stopped all 15 shots he faced in the first after the Leonard goal, keeping the Caps in the contest. The two teams went more than 10 minutes between whistles at one point in the first, and Washington also went more than 10 minutes without testing Detroit goaltender John Gibson in the opening period.
The second period provided a bit of déjà vu, and not in a good way for the Caps. For the second time in as many periods, the Wings scored on their first shot of the frame, and again it was the older brother of a Capital doing the damage. This time, James van Riemsdyk jumped over the boards during an offensive zone shift for the Wings. He skated straight to the net and arrived just in time to pot the rebound of a Moritz Seider miss that bounded off the back wall and directly to van Riemsdyk’s tape, six seconds after his shift began, at 1:37 of the second.
Detroit kept the heat on, and at 5:55 6-foot-8, 246-pound winger Elmer Soderblom outmuscled coverage at the net front and buried another rebound from the top of the paint to make it a 3-0 game.
Just after the midpoint of the middle period, Seider forced a turnover at the Washington line and tore off on a breakaway, beating Thompson to put the Wings up 4-0 at 10:05.
Aliaksei Protas finally got the Caps on the board less than a minute later, scoring on a shot from the left circle off the rush just 31 seconds after the Seider goal.
Washington applied some occasional offensive zone pressure in the back half of the second, but not enough to alter the score.
While each of Detroit’s first three goals – all it would need to win the game – came from at or near the paint, the Caps weren’t able to get to most of the rebounds generated from their point shots, and many of their looks and tips from in front skittered just inches away from the post.
“As far as net front and our ability to get second [chances],” says Carbery, “it’s something we have to do a better job of offensively, to get rewarded and to win those 1-on-1 situations, to dig, to fight, to find a tip, to find the rebound. That’s an area that we have to improve as a team. And defensively, we’ve got to win those 1-on-1 situation as a team, and we didn’t tonight.”
Just before the midpoint of the third, the Caps put together a dogged offensive zone shift that culminated in a Martin Fehervary goal, making it a 4-2 contest with 11:30 left, plenty of time for a comeback.
Fehervary’s goal put some buzz in the building, and when Jakob Chychrun scored into a yawning cage from the weak side of the ice soon afterwards, it looked as though the comeback was in full swing. Alas, officials ruled that Protas had interfered with Gibson, and a coach’s challenge from Washington didn’t change the result of that call. Officials ruled that Protas impaired Gibson’s ability to play his position in the crease before the puck entered the net.
Detroit captain Dylan Larkin accounted for the 5-2 final with a late goal into an empty net, and the Caps and Wings quickly made their way to the airport for Sunday’s rematch in the Motor City.
“It was a good start,” says Detroit coach Todd McLellan. “These afternoon games, I think they sometimes favor the road team. You’re at the hotel, you have your meal, you come and get ready to play. When you’re at home, your rhythm is off a little bit; I don’t know if that was a factor today, but we did have a good first period.”
