Caps' Comeback Falls Short, 4-3

Elias Lindholm's hat trick was too much for the Caps to overcome on Saturday in a 4-3 overtime loss to the Calgary Flames. Facing the Flames in a matinee affair at Capital One Arena, the Caps were too slow out of the starting gate, and it cost them a point in the end.

Lindholm struck once at 5-on-5 and once while Calgary was shorthanded in a three-goal first period for the Flames, and he netted the game-winner at 2:46 of the extra session to give Calgary its second straight victory in the first two games of a five-game road trip.
Washington spotted the Flames a three-goal lead in the first before coming back to tie the game with three goals of its own in the third.
"Speed, our attitude, and our compete level - all those things changed for the good," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette of his team's performance after the first period. "And from that point it was good.
"We were visibly - by the way the game was played - not as sharp as we needed to be. We were second to the battle and didn't skate fast enough, didn't move our feet quick enough. We got going in the second period and kind of flipped it around. But it was just not the start you're looking for."

Washington's alarm clocks went off later than Calgary's did on Saturday morning, and the Caps were stuck in the mud for the game's first 20 minutes. T.J. Oshie put a 54-footer on net in the game's first half minute, and the Caps didn't manage to put another puck on Calgary's Dan Vladar for the next 11 minutes and 21 seconds.
By the time the Caps did manage that second shot on goal, it matched the number of goals for the visiting Flames.
The Caps could do nothing with an early power play when Calgary was busted for having too many men on the ice, and the Flames took a 1-0 lead on their own first man advantage of the afternoon. Andrew Mangiapane buried a rebound of a Noah Hanifin point shot at 9:27 to give the Flames a 1-0 lead, saddling the Caps with their first scoreboard deficit of the young season.
Just 92 seconds later, Calgary doubled that early advantage when Elias Lindholm took a feed from Johnny Gaudreau and scored from just above the right circle.
A second Washington power play gave the Caps a chance to cut the Calgary lead in half, but instead, the hole got deeper. After the puck hopped past John Carlson at the right point, Lindholm won a foot race to the loose puck and made it a 3-0 game with an impressive shorthanded breakaway strike at 17:18 of the first.
Only two of the Caps' eight first-period shots on net came from inside of 30 feet, and both of those were on tipped shots that originated from the outside. By contrast, Calgary had 14 shots in the first, and nine of them came from inside of 30 feet. Five of the Flames' shots in the first were from inside of 20 feet away, including two of their three goals.
"Just not ready, I don't know," says Caps defenseman Justin Schultz of the sluggish start. "We're not used to the one o'clock games I guess, and we just weren't skating in the first period there. But we picked it up in the second, and we had a good comeback. We just needed a better start, but we'll learn from it."
Laviolette installed Ilya Samsonov in the crease to start the second, and the Caps began the task of climbing out of the hole they dug for themselves in the game's first 20 minutes.
"It was just to change the game," says Laviolette of the switch in goal. "You look at the goals that were scored, and there were some nice goals. He made the first save on a redirect, and they put the rebound in. The second one, he had one or two guys right in front of him and [Lindholm] laced it to the corner. And the partial breakaway goal where he cut in on the angle was a nice goal as well.
"It's not like you fault [Vanecek] on the goals, but in the same sense you're trying to change the game and shake the game up."
That comeback process began inauspiciously when Carlson went off for hooking two minutes into the middle period. But less than a minute after he was seated, Evgeny Kuznetsov continued his hot start, scoring his first shorthanded goal in more than three and a half years. Kuznetsov stripped Gaudreau of the puck just inside the Calgary line, walked in and beat Vladar to make it a 3-1 game.

Less than five minutes later, the Caps pulled to within one on a nifty rush goal. Alex Ovechkin blocked a Christopher Tanev shot and started the breakout, pushing the puck to Martin Fehervary, who headmanned it to Tom Wilson. Wilson gained the zone and left it for Fehervary, who ripped a shot past Vladar from the right circle at 7:48. Fehervary's first NHL goal made it a 3-2 game.
Late in the second period, Ovechkin netted his fifth of the season. The Caps' captain collected a turnover just inside the Washington line and skated down the left wing wall, firing it past Vladar from the top of the left circle at 18:03 of the third to even the game up at 3-3.
When Kuznetsov drew an interference penalty in the second minute of the third, the Caps had a golden opportunity to take their first lead of the day. But both Caps shot attempts were blocked and the stalemate stretched to the end of regulation.
Near the midpoint of the extra session, Vladar started the Calgary breakout with a feed to Gaudreau, fueling a 3-on-2 rush. Gaudreau gained the zone, then hit Lindholm in the middle of the ice, just as the latter put on a burst to move past Ovechkin. Lindholm scored from just above the paint, his shot trickling through Samsonov at 2:46.
"We won the first period and lost the second period, but there wasn't a whole lot of difference in either period, quite honestly," says Calgary coach Darryl Sutter. "Shorthanded goal we scored gave us some momentum, and the shorthanded goal they scored gave them some momentum. And then Ovi's line scored two goals in the second period. We made a bad read on one - the left [defenseman] did - and we gave the puck back in the middle of the ice on the third one."