Despite some early promise and a spirited late comeback, the Capitals’ modest three-game winning streak was halted at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday night at Capital One Arena. Brandon Hagel had a pair of goals and four points, and Nikita Kucherov managed a goal and three points despite departing with an injury after skating just 5:18 in the game.
Washington scored first, but yielded four goals against in the first frame, chasing the Bolts unsuccessfully for the rest of the night in a 5-3 setback.
Once again, special team play was the difference. After taking the early 1-0 lead, the Caps fell behind before the first television timeout, surrendering a shorthanded goal to Hagel and a power-play goal to Oliver Bjorkstrand. When Hagel added another on a clapper from the slot and Kucherov made it 4-1 on a breakaway late in the first, Caps coach Spencer Carbery pulled Logan Thompson after he was dented for four goals on six shots in 18:19 in the crease, inserting Charlie Lindgren.
At night’s end, Saturday’s game was another in which Washington dominated analytically at 5-on-5, but was undone by its special teams play.
“No doubt that early in the game, we looked really good, had good jump,” says Carbery. “And then gave up the shorthanded goal, which I don’t think is the end of the world. Do you lose momentum? For sure you do. Is it a lapse in judgment from those five guys, and we get a little bit casual, and now all of a sudden Hagel is stepping into an opportunity? But we’re still in a fine spot.”
The Caps ended the night 0-for-6 on the power play, and with four shots on net during 8:46 with the man advantage. Two of those four shots came while the Caps had a two-man advantage.
“But then, as it progressively went,” continues Carbery, “you guys saw how it went. That’s not even close to good enough from what we need from our power play.”
For a couple of minutes early in the game, the Caps were in control. Dylan Strome had an excellent scoring chance on the first shift of the contest, and – for the 15th time in 22 games this season – Washington got on the scoreboard first.
When Justin Sourdif struck at 1:06 of the first period against Tampa Bay netminder Jonas Johansson, it marked the fourth straight game in which Washington scored the game’s first goal within the first four minutes of the contest. The Caps won each of the first three games in that sequence, and they held a scoreboard lead for 166:49 of the 180 minutes (92.7 percent) of hockey they played over that stretch.
But less than two minutes after Sourdif scored, the pattern was broken. Hagel scored a shorthanded goal just 14 seconds into a Washington power play to tie the game at 1-1. Less than three minutes later, Bjorkstand gave the Lightning the lead on a power play at 5:21.
“The shorty was the big one,” says Lightning coach Jon Cooper. “Anytime you get scored on in the first minute of the game, half the team hasn’t touched the ice yet, so that was tough. And then you take the penalty, and now you’re hoping you don’t go down two, and Hags gets the big one to get it tied at one.”
Hagel’s goal was the fifth allowed by the Capitals within two minutes of a Washington goal in the last three games.
“It's not good enough at this level,” says Caps winger Tom Wilson of the early shorthanded goal against. “It just can't happen. You know it might cost us the game on a night like tonight. So it was a bit of a weird one, but the end of the day, it can't happen. Every guy on the ice has to just be a little bit better.”
In the second, the Caps created several prime scoring chances for themselves, but the only time they could make the goal light go on was on a fortuitous bounce. From high on the right half wall, Jakob Chychrun whirled and fired a drive that clanked off the skate of Tampa Bay forward Gage Concalves and went high into the cage behind Johansson at 5:26, cutting the Lightning lead to 4-2.
Late in the period, Tampa Bay rookie Curtis Douglas – a 6-foot-9, 242-pound center who entered the game averaging just 5:48 per game in ice time while skating in 14 of the Lightning’s first 20 games – was sent over the boards, and he challenged Wilson to a bout.
“I don't know much about him,” says Wilson of Douglas. “Sometimes you’ve got to do it; he came over the boards – and a bit of a weird line change – and all of a sudden we're in a fight.”
Wilson won the fight, but the Caps lost Wilson for the next five minutes of their comeback bid, and they did nothing with the power play that resulted from Douglas’ instigator minor.
The Caps kept the heat on the depleted Lightning defense in the third, and Ethen Frank’s hot hand continued when he rifled a shot from the right circle past Johansson at 5:24, making it a 4-3 contest.
When the Lightning got jammed up with a couple of penalties soon after, the Caps were suddenly looking at a 5-on-3 power play for 73 seconds. They managed a Chychrun drive from the slot that Johansson gloved down, and a Wilson shot from in tight, but both Caps also missed the mark on good looks, and Alex Ovechkin rang the iron when he hammered a howitzer from the slot.
The puck came out of the zone, and Chychrun was whistled for an interference penalty before the Caps could regain the zone.
When Anthony Cirelli managed to beat Lindgren on a third chance opportunity at 15:51, the two-goal lead proved too much to overcome in the time remaining.
“I think if we had five or 10 more minutes, we could have had it,” says Wilson. “We just dug ourselves a hole.”
For the Lightning, getting a win in a game in which both Kucherov and Brayden Point departed with injuries amounts to a big two points in the team’s lone road game in a six-game stretch. But it all started with Hagel’s goal early in the Washington power play that could have put the Bolts down two pucks early.
“That, to me, was a little bit of a turning point for us early in the game,” says Cooper. “And then for us to do what we did and get that lead, trust me, it wasn’t easy the last two periods by any means. But when you have a lead like that, you have a little room to play with.
“We defended well enough, but it did get a little scary when they went 5-on-3, but we got through it, and fortunately [the Caps] took a penalty. But a gutty effort with a really short bench; I think we ended up with nine forwards at the end.”
