Caps Fall 2-1 to Devils in Shootout

Winners of one of their previous 10 games and four of their previous 20, the New Jersey Devils limped into the District without top forward Taylor Hall and with their No. 1 netminder fighting a prolonged slump. Outscored by a combined total of 35-16 in their previous 10 games, the Devils got back on track with a 2-1 shootout win over Washington in Thursday's game at Verizon Center.

Backup goaltender Keith Kinkaid got the start in favor of Cory Schneider, who is 2-6-2 in 10 December starts. Kinkaid was excellent, and he was also fortunate at times and that combination was enough to stymie the Capitals, who got 44 of their 78 shot attempts on net, but needed Daniel Winnik's shorthanded goal in the third period to scrape a single point from the contest.

The Capitals fired at will, and Kinkaid seemed to have the answer to everything until Winnik and Beagle teamed up to beat him while the Caps were down a man early in the third. Many of Kinkaid's saves were of the snow angel variety, but they don't ask "how," they ask "how many."

The answer to that question on Thursday night was 43. While that may seem like a lot of shots, it's just another night at the office for Kinkaid. Thursday's game marks the fourth time in his last six starts he has faced more than 40 shots.

"He was very good," understates Devils coach John Hynes. "He was a big difference in the game tonight."

The two sides played to a scoreless and somewhat somnambulant first frame, and then the Devils scored the game's first goal just 65 seconds into the second period. In the holiday tradition, it was gift-wrapped with a pretty bow.

After winning a draw in his own end of the ice, Caps center Evgeny Kuznetsov slid an extremely unwise blind backhand pass toward the high slot, right to the tape of veteran Devils winger P.A. Parenteau. Parenteau politely accepted the gift, firing it high on the stick side and behind Braden Holtby to give New Jersey a 1-0 lead.

"It's part of the game," says Parenteau. "[Kuznetsov] is a playmaker; sometimes things happen. I've been on the other side of that and it's not fun. But we'll take it. I think we needed that goal the way things were going."

"I just thought that was very careless," laments Caps coach Barry Trotz of the Kuznetsov giveaway. "We're in our zone, we have a face-off, we won it, and you're going to throw a blind pass. Just secure the puck and live to fight another day. Get a little communication. I was really upset with that pass, because it was unnecessary, I felt."

The Capitals' penalty killing outfit has been superb for several weeks now, and that was the case again on Thursday as they successfully snuffed out all four New Jersey power plays, including a brief two-man advantage of 14 seconds in duration. But the Caps' penalty killers also supplied all of the team's offense in the game.

Washington was shorthanded four times on the night, and the Caps scored on the third of those opportunities, while Andre Burakovsky was serving a hi-sticking sentence early in the third.

Seventeen seconds after Burakovsky was seated, the duo of Jay Beagle and Daniel Winnik combined to basically will the puck behind Kinkaid. Winnik carried into the zone, fighting off his check much of the way. He got a soft backhander on net, but Kinkaid made the save, and the puck went behind the net after Beagle fanned on a rebound bid. Beagle pursued the puck below the goal line, and he was going down to the ice, he sent a desperate backhand feed to the front. Winnik was able to put it behind Kinkaid with the second whack.

"It was kind of a two-on-two," explains Beagle, "their middle guy fell, kind of in a foot race with me, and he went to his knees. So it kind of turned into a two-on-one with a tracker behind us, so it wasn't a clear two-on-one. I just yelled to Winnie that he had time, so their [defenseman] slid over and played me more, and let the tracker try and take [Winnik].

"He just flicks that on net, and I almost got it with my foot on the very first rebound. I knew Winnie was standing there, and I just tried to shovel it back as I fell. I just tried to get it back behind me to Winnie for an open net."

The Caps had plenty of looks and plenty of chances, but they also missed the mark altogether on some of their better chances of the night. Also, many of those looks and chances were coming from Washington blueliners and the bottom six forwards.

Late in the second, Trotz began toying with his top six to try to ignite a spark.

"I thought our top two lines, there wasn't anything getting generated, so I just mixed them up a little bit," says Trotz.

In the end, Kinkaid was able to make all the saves he needed to make - including both shots he faced in the shootout - sending the Capitals to their fourth loss in their last five games (1-2-2). Thursday's loss to New Jersey marked the second game in a row the Caps have dropped to the last place team in the Metropolitan Division. The Islanders were in the cellar before they edged the Caps 4-3 in Brooklyn on Tuesday.

"We had excellent goaltending tonight," says Hynes. "We were under siege quite a bit there for parts of the game. We had to be willing to be able to defend that hard. We got excellent goaltending, and that was the commitment level when we didn't have the puck, to be able to defend that hard.

"The next step now is we've got to have some better execution to not put ourselves in so many situations where we have to defend that hard. But [it was] a really committed effort by the guys tonight."