Caps Close Homestand vs. Bolts
Still seeking offensive consistency, Caps finish homestand and start home-and-home set with Tampa Bay
The Caps close out their longest homestand of the season on Friday night when they host the Tampa Bay Lightning in what is also the front end of a set of home-and-home games between the two teams. Washington and Tampa Bay will tangle again on Sunday night in Tampa.
Friday's game is the finale of a four-game homestand for the Caps, and they'll need a victory to break even for the homestand. After falling to Arizona in the opener last Saturday, they downed Edmonton in a 5-4 thriller on Monday before taking a 4-1 defeat at the hands of the Pittsburgh Penguins here on Wednesday night.
Washington was strong in the first 10 minutes of the loss to Pittsburgh, generating some good early scoring chances and offensive-zone time, but the Pens took over in the back half of a scoreless first. In the second, Pittsburgh capitalized on a fluky bounce, a turnover that generated a shorthanded goal and a point shot through traffic to build a 3-0 lead the Caps couldn't overcome.
Since the Alex Ovechkin/Nicklas Backstrom era began in 2007-08, the Caps have been the League's second-most prolific offensive team, scoring 3,638 goals in 1,172 games for an average of 3.1 goals per game. Only Pittsburgh (3.13) has scored more over that span. Washington (2,082) is second only to Pittsburgh (2,088) in 5-on-5 goals over that span, too. But with so many regular forwards out of its lineup on a nightly basis this season, creating and generating offense has been a struggle for Washington through the first month of the regular season.
Fifteen games into this season, the Caps rank 27th in the circuit with an average of 2.73 goals per game. While Washington's total of 26 goals at 5-on-5 ranks 17th on the season to date, much of that production came earlier in the season before the injuries piled up to eight players - who combine for a dent of more than $40 million in the team's annual salary cap - who have been unavailable for the last two games. Most of those eight players have been out for much longer.
Since a 6-3 win over the Devils in New Jersey on Oct. 24, the Capitals have managed only eight goals at 5-on-5 to rank 30th in the League over that span. Fortunately, they've scored nearly as many (seven) power-play goals over the same stretch, leaving them with an underwhelming 2-4-2 record in those eight games.
In some of those games, the Caps have been reasonably pleased with the amount and quality of their scoring chances at 5-on-5, and other times, not so much. Regardless, the results haven't been there. The Caps have scored more than one goal at 5-on-5 just once in their last eight games, squandering some good goaltending along the way.
"I thought that [Monday against Edmonton] we did a pretty good job," said Caps coach Peter Laviolette, hours before the Caps' loss to Pittsburgh on Wednesday. "We got to the interior, we hit the crossbar, we had point blank chances. So [Monday] to me was a step in the right direction.
"There were a few games there where I don't think we generated enough. I had said it after the game was over; we've got to do a better job of putting some runs on the board so that if you make a mistake defensively - which you do, in the course of a hockey game there's always mistakes - you get the goal support to make up for that, where it's not looked at so heavily. And so [Monday], I thought we did. It didn't show with just the one goal [at 5-on-5], but there was a lot of looks. I think we hit the post four times, so there were some good things that we did."
Wednesday's game against Pittsburgh started with a number of promising chances early, but regression soon set in and in one 13-minute stretch late in the first, Washington had one shot on net while being whistled for four icings. As Laviolette notes, some nights present more of a consistent attack, but Wednesday was not one of them. The Caps lacked cohesion and seemed out of synch offensively, struggling to maintain an offensive zone presence against a team that was down to four healthy defensemen in the game's final 20 minutes.
With eight points (one goal, seven assists), defenseman Nick Jensen is Washington's leading scorer at 5-on-5 this season. Most of the Caps' leading scorers have done a significant portion of their offensive damage on the power play, which has climbed back into the top third of the League's ranking. The team as a whole is still seeking to find its level and its consistency at evens.
"The goalies have been doing a good job," says Caps center Evgeny Kuznetsov, referring to opposing netminders. "They've been playing well. And overall, I feel like hockey teams are focusing more on the defensive zone and how we're going to play [defense] and don't spend much time for offense. Now I feel like everybody wants to make sure that we're good defensively, and then offense. So there is never offense first and then [defense] second because that's how it is right now."
The Caps will see the Lightning twice this weekend and won't face them again until late March when they visit the Bolts in Florida again, so Friday marks the lone visit to the District this season of the team that has made three straight appearances in the Stanley Cup Final, winning the first two.
Tampa Bay comes into Friday's game on the heels of a 3-2 loss to Edmonton in the finale of a four-game homestand in which they went 2-1-1. After this quick trip to D.C., both teams head back to Tampa where the Lightning will host the Capitals in the opener of a three-game homestand on Sunday, which is the opener of a three-game road trip for Washington.
