Right from the start, the Caps didn’t have their ‘A’ game on Tuesday night in Detroit at Little Caesars Arena. And right from the start, the Red Wings quite clearly did have their ‘A’ game. The result was a lopsided 8-3 loss for the Caps, who entered the game on a 5-1-2 run.
“Right from the start, you could see the talent through their lineup and through their roster and the plays that they make,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “Obviously, the finish that they have was on full display.”
Detroit put a crooked number on the board in each of the game’s three periods, cruising to its sixth straight victory. The Wings created eight goals on 31 shots from seven different skaters; only blueliner Shayne Gostisbehere struck twice. Six of Detroit’s goals came at even strength, they also scored once shorthanded and once on the power play. Thirteen of the Wings’ 18 skaters registered at least one point.
“We just didn’t start well,” says Caps’ defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk. “We didn’t – for whatever reason – play the game that’s led to some good results lately. We were turning it over a ton to them, and with a team as skilled as them – lines one through four and [defensemen] one through six – they took advantage and we made them look fast. Obviously, they’re a skilled, fast team. They don’t need any help with that, and we just fed right into it.”
Detroit came out of the gates with a lot of wheels and a lot of jump, and the Wings moved the puck around crisply and sharply. The Red Wings created a pair of first-period goals from offensive zone possession shifts, and Caps’ goalie Charlie Lindgren kept it from being worse with a pair of stellar stops from in tight, one on Lucas Raymond and the other on Robby Fabbri, both from point blank range.
Gostisbehere started the scoring for the Wings at 5:45 of the first, taking a tee-up feed from Joe Veleno and driving a one-timer home from the right circle.
Detroit doubled its lead late in the first when JT Compher fed a wide-open Raymond for the finish from the slot at 16:20.
Even after falling down by two goals after one, the Caps had opportunities to climb back into the contest, but they weren’t able to do so. Just after Washington killed off the first Detroit power play, Lindgren made two strong stops early in the second, denying Andrew Copp and Michael Rasmussen from in tight in short succession.
Less than a minute later, those saves loomed large when Hendrix Lapierre scored his third goal in the last two nights, cutting the Detroit lead to 2-1 at 2:09 of the middle period. But the Caps weren’t able to keep it together long enough to mount a bid for the tying tally.
Within five minutes of the Lapierre goal, the Wings extended their lead to 4-1 on slot shots from Veleno and Gostisbehere; the former off a Washington turnover in its own end, and the latter off a multi-zone give-and-go with Raymond.
The Caps missed the net 14 times in the second period alone, and they finished the nights with just 21 shots on net in 66 shot attempts; they appeared to be freelancing in the offensive zone much more than in recent games.
Down three in the middle of the second, the Caps clawed to within two when Mike Sgarbossa whirled and fired a shot past Alex Lyon to make it a 4-2 game at 16:38. John Carlson narrowly missed just after, and Washington went to its first power play of the game on the same shift. The Caps’ power play has been hot of late, but Compher took all the air out of any comeback bid with a shorthanded strike at 19:47, making it a 5-2 game.
It was the fourth of five Detroit goals to that point that was scored from the middle of the ice.
“They’re a good skating team, and their [defensemen] have good gaps,” says Caps’ winger Tom Wilson. “They turn pucks over through the middle of the ice. We needed to simplify early, and we didn’t. That gave them rush offense, and they’ve got skilled players that can make things happen.”
Max Pacioretty scored his second power-play goal in as many games in the third, but only after Fabbri scored from the top of the paint on a Detroit power play. Goals from Alex DeBrincat and Dylan Larkin in the back half of the third accounted for the 8-3 final, the most goals the Caps have yielded in a game in nearly three years, since an 8-4 setback at the hands of the Islanders in New York on April 1, 2021.
Having finished a stretch of five games in eight nights and traveling for each, the Caps now head home for a two-game stay, starting with a Friday night date with the Philadelphia Flyers.
“We’ll figure it out,” says Carbery. “We’re not going to just flush it; we’ve got to look at some of these things. We’re going to see this team again. There’s a lot of structure things that we need to get cleaned up, and we’ll focus on and work on, and we’ll turn the page. We’ve played well. That game is a one off for our group, so we’ll turn the page.”
