Nick Suzuki and Juraj Slavkovsky scored two goals each to pace the Montreal Canadiens to a 5-2 victory over the Capitals at Capital One Arena on Tuesday night in the first game back from the bye week and the All-Star break for both squads. For Washington, Tuesday’s setback was its fifth in succession (0-4-1), and as has been the case too often during this stretch, the Caps dug themselves a hole from which they weren’t able to extricate themselves.
Montreal put the Caps behind the eight ball early on Tuesday night, striking for a trio of first-period tallies in a span of 6 minutes and 25 seconds in the middle of the opening frame. Suzuki scored his two goals less than a minute apart in the front half of the first, and when Michael Pezzetta made it 3-0 for the visitors at 13:07, Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery made a goaltending change, replacing former Habs goalie Charlie Lindgren with Darcy Kuemper.
Lindgren yielded three goals on nine shots in his 13 plus minutes in the net.
“Just change the momentum,” answers Carbery, asked about making the goaltending change at that juncture of the contest. “And the chances that we give up, it’s just the same old story. We just make some massive mistakes there, that unfortunately for us are just happening to different guys each night, and it’s tough. I feel for them because they’re trying, but at the end of the day, in pro hockey and the National Hockey League, you’ve got to be able to perform if you’re going to be winning games against another team that’s obviously competing.”
“We just made some really, really bad mistakes. And obviously, if you turn the puck over, it’s going to end up in the back of your net.”
The puck being in the back of Washington’s net is the “same old story” part of Tuesday’s game. When the Caps were playing their best hockey of the season from late October to the Christmas break, they were keeping pucks out of their net and frustrating opposing offenses, and winning a lot of low-scoring, one-goal games.
Over their most effective stretch of the season, a 26-game span leading up to the holiday break in late December, the Caps yielded an average of just 2.46 goals against per game, the third lowest rate in the League over that span, equivalent to roughly a third of a full season.
But in 17 games since, the Caps have been bleeding goals against. They’ve been dented for 64 goals against over that stretch, and their rate of 3.76 goals against per game is tied – with Montreal – for the worst in the League.
“A couple bad bounces and you find yourself down 3-0,” laments Caps’ center Dylan Strome. “We could never really battle back. I thought we played pretty good in the second, and for some of the third, but just giving up timely goals. I thought we had some good fight but it doesn't really matter once you’re down 3-0.”
To the Caps’ credit, they rebounded for a strong second period, but they were only able to manage to get a single puck behind Montreal netminder Sam Montembeault, who finished with 37 saves – including 32 in the final two frames – in recording his team-leading 12th victory of the season.
Caps’ captain Alex Ovechkin scored in the second to cut the lead to 3-1, but they couldn’t pull any closer. By the time Rasmus Sandin scored Washington’s second goal in the back half of the third, it had the same effect as Ovechkin’s goal; it cut the Montreal lead to two goals, at 4-2.
“Obviously, we know how we have to play to be successful – we did it in second,” says Strome. “I think we outshot them 16-4 and we were all over them. Obviously, you can’t just play one period in this League, especially. Now we've put ourselves in a bit of a hole here, so not a great time to lose five in a row.”
If the Caps could have scratched out one more goal in the second, the outcome might have been different. They put steady and consistent heat on the Habs in the middle period, but were only able to solve Montembeault once, when Strome expertly fed Ovechkin for an open net shot from the weak side.
“That puts us three goals down, and that’s really difficult for us to recover from,” says Carbery of the first period. “Second period, we had some good chances, and you can probably get that game to 3-2, maybe it’s a different story. But in the first, giving up three for us makes it challenging."
Following their nine-day break, the Caps are back in the thick of what is a daunting schedule the rest of the way. They don’t have time to dwell on failures or successes, they’ve got to move on to the next game and find a way to turn the tide. That won't be easy, given the caliber of the opposition.
“The [Mentors’] trip is coming up, and we’ll look at the positives,” says Strome. “We know we’ve got to get some wins, got to string some wins together. We've done it before, so maybe we can do it again.”
The Caps’ Mentors’ trip starts in Florida on Thursday and concludes on Saturday in Boston.
