Connor Ingram stopped all 26 shots sent his way on Monday night, helping the Arizona Coyotes to their fifth straight victory, a 6-0 shutout of the Capitals in the finale of their five-game western road trip. Arizona scored five times in the first period against Washington to push its winning streak to five.
Monday’s win gives the Coyotes their longest winning streak in more than four and a half years, since a six-game streak from Feb. 19-March 2, 2019. The five teams Arizona defeated during its streak are the last five Stanley Cup champions, and Ingram – named the NHL’s No. 1 star for the week ending Dec. 3 – started the run with a 2-0 blanking of the Golden Knights in Vegas on Nov. 25.
Losing Monday’s rubber match of the trip sends the Caps home with a 2-3-0 record for their five-game journey.
“We talked about it,” says Caps’ captain Alex Ovechkin. “It was really important for us after the loss in Vegas [on Saturday] to bounce back. I think we played a good first period; we just didn’t score, and they scored.”
For about eight minutes on Monday night at Tempe’s Mullett Arena, the Caps played the game they wanted to play. They were around the Arizona net, they possessed the puck in the offensive zone, and they funneled pucks toward the net. The Caps had the first five shots on net of the night, and three of them came off the sticks of skilled forwards from inside of 30 feet away.
But the rest of the period was all Arizona, and then some. The Coyotes struck for five goals on 10 shots in a span of less than 10 minutes of the opening stanza, scoring on each of their first two shots on net. The Coyotes later chased former Arizona netminder Darcy Kuemper, whose night ended after he was dented for three goals on five shots in 13:49 of work.
“Believe it or not, I didn’t mind our start,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “They just score on everything. I knew right away Kuemps looked a little bit off, and so you’re on guard there and hoping he can stop the bleeding. But once that third one goes in; their power play was really good – puck movement, on the tape, everything clean. Then it got out of hand.”
Logan Cooley started the onslaught with a back door, weak side power-play goal at 8:46 of the first. Then it was Michael Carcone, who extended his goal streak to four games with a shot from the high slot off the rush at 10:02. Carcone has five goals in his last four games. Nick Schmaltz netted the next one on another Arizona power play, the Coyotes’ fifth game this season with multiple power-play goals. That goal – at 14:15 of the first – brought Charlie Lindgren on in relief of Kuemper.
Schmaltz scored his second goal in less than three minutes at 17:13, and Jason Zucker scored Arizona’s fifth goal in a span of 9 minutes and 53 seconds with 1:21 remaining in the first.
“To be honest with you, it’s never fun to go in mid-game,” says Lindgren. “I felt really bad for Kuemps, but honestly it was just a couple of bad bounces; the first one goes off a skate for them, and the third one goes off [Nic] Dowd’s stick – not much he can do. And they got all the momentum there. I hopped in, and they get a couple more.
“The first intermission is about just settling down and taking a deep breath. It definitely wasn’t a perfect game by anyone tonight, but it’s one we can learn from. It’s an 82-game schedule; these games are going to happen, and you’ve just got to move forward.”
Earlier in the trip – last Thursday in Anaheim – the Caps scored four first-period goals for the first time since March of 2008. On Monday night in Tempe, Washington surrendered five goals against in the first period, doing so for the 17th time in franchise history, but just the second time in this century. Prior to Monday, the last time the Caps gave up five goals in the first period was on Dec. 26, 2006 in a 6-3 loss to the Sabres in Buffalo. As you might imagine, none of those previous instances resulted in a Washington win, either.
Seven of the previous 16 instances did result in the opposition putting up a double-digit goal total by game’s end, an added ignominy the Caps were able to avoid on Monday.
Washington was unable to light the lamp on a trio of power-play opportunities in the second period, but the score did change on the third of those man advantages; Arizona’s Nick Bjugstad scored a shorthanded goal on a 2-on-none rush with Alex Kerfoot at 16:54, pushing the Coyotes’ lead to 6-0.
Having suffered their fourth shutout set back of the season – accounting for half of their regulation losses – the Caps will fly home on Tuesday and they’ll open up a two-game homestand on Thursday against Dallas. Washington has scored nine goals in its last six games, with four of those goals coming in the first period of last Thursday’s game in Anaheim.
“Yes and no,” answers Carbery, asked if he is seeing anything that’s closer to what he is seeking from his team offensively. “There's points where we control play, and we do some good things in the offensive zone. We've just really got to get to work, and work with our skill development and work with our individual players at creating separation, being able to make a play out of pressure, and even odd man rush execution, tape-to-tape plays, little, small area plays in tight areas, all of that stuff.
“We’ve just got to get to work as an organization on developing that, and working with the players on it. It’s most evident when I watch [the Arizona] power play. I watched those guys move that puck around, and the way they make those small area plays; four-foot sauce here, five-foot sauce here, cross-ice sauce, and that's where it becomes really evident of where we need to get caught up in in playmaking to create scoring. And I know that's on the power play, but I think some of that stuff translates [to 5-on-5].”
