Coming off an uplifting overtime win on Saturday in New Jersey, the Caps had hopes of starting the most modest of winning streaks on Monday night in Florida against the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers. Like Saturday’s game against the Devils, it was a seesaw affair, but the Caps weren’t able to wrangle two points from the Panthers, who prevailed 5-3.
Aaron Ekblad’s goal in the back half of the third period snapped a 3-3 deadlock and lifted Florida to its ninth win in its last dozen games (9-3-0), while leaving Washington on the short end of the score for the seventh time in its last nine games (2-5-2).
Tom Wilson scored a pair of goals for the Caps in a losing effort.
“I thought we put ourselves in a good spot going into the third period,” begins Caps coach Spencer Carbery, “to not only get points in the game, but to win the hockey game. I thought we were right there, just a few plays on both sides of the puck – both offensively and defensively – that go the other way, and we end up on the short end of it.”
The Caps got the scoring started just ahead of the four-minute mark of the first when Martin Fehervary took off on the rush, put on a burst of speed and fired a shot that Florida’s Sergei Bobrovsky stopped, only to see Wilson bury the rebound for a 1-0 lead at 3:53.
It took Florida less than a minute to pull even. The puck popped to Jeff Petry in the middle of the ice in Washington territory, and he spotted Anton Lundell down low, just off the left post. Petry hit Lundell for a lay-up at 4:35.
Washington took a pair of consecutive penalties in the middle of the period, and the Cats cashed in on the second of those extra-man opportunities when Sam Reinhart ripped a wrist shot to the shelf from the right dot at 12:45, giving Florida its first lead of the night, 2-1.
Late in the frame, the Panthers ran into some penalty woes. With A.J. Greer already in the box, Seth Jones was sent off for a double-minor for hi-sticking Caps forward Justin Sourdif. While the Caps weren’t able to take advantage of 50 seconds worth of two-man advantage time, they did square the score on a Wilson power-play goal – a one-timer from the slot off a fine feed from Dylan Strome – at 19:17.
The Caps had more than a minute’s worth of carryover power play time at the outset of the second, and they had a fourth power play opportunity early in the middle period as well, but neither produced a change in the score.
In the back half of the middle frame, the Capitals were whistled for what were essentially back-to-back tripping calls, and they weathered both of those shorthanded missions against a Florida squad that has had a lot of extra-man reps of late; the Cats went 1-for-10 on the power play in their previous game, a 4-2 loss to the Lightning here on Saturday.
In the third, both teams scored what were essentially power-play goals, though neither went into the books as such.
On a delayed penalty early in the third, Strome scored from way downtown, floating a seeing eye shot through traffic and past Bobrovsky to give the Caps a 3-2 lead at 3:11.
Washington went shorthanded again soon after, and while that will go into the books for the Caps as a successful kill, Brad Marchand evened the game at 3-3 when he batted the rebound of a Sam Bennett shot past Thompson from the top of the paint, one second after the power play expired, at 6:16.
Ekblad’s goal came less than a minute after a nifty Bobrovsky stop on a Strome deflection bid. From the right circle, Ekblad took a feed from Eetu Luostarinen and clapped a shot past Thompson to put the two-time defending champs ahead for good at 13:12.
The Caps had a late power play that produced a couple of looks, but no equalizer. The Panthers clamped down on Washington in the third period, yielding just one shot on goal in nearly 13 minutes worth of 5-on-5 time in the final frame.
“When they get the puck, they move it,” says Wilson, who extended his team-high goal total to 19 on Monday. “When they get the puck, they flip it out of the zone. Anytime the puck’s on their [defenseman’s] stick, it's gone. So, if you don't get and win those second man races, you're going to spend the whole night regrouping in the neutral zone. And they’ve got big [defensemen] that play hard down there, and they just throw the puck out of the zone, so we just didn't generate enough in the in the [offensive] zone.”
Reinhart's second goal of the game went into an empty Washington net in the final minute to account for the 5-3 final.
The Caps won’t have to wait long to get back on the horse. They host the New York Rangers Wednesday in a New Year’s Eve matinee, and the front of a back-to-back set of contests. The Caps will spend New Year’s Day north of the border in Ottawa, battling the Senators in another afternoon affair.
