Caps Comeback to Claim Point in St. Louis

As the late, great Doug Sahm sang, "A little bit is better than nada." That's the case for the Caps on Thursday night in St. Louis after they staged a furious late rally to force overtime only to have the Blues prevail in a six-round skills competition to win 5-4, handing the Caps their third loss (0-2-1) in as many games on this now completed road trip.

When they embarked upon this three-game journey last weekend, the Caps had yielded just eight first-period goals in their first 16 games of the season, tied for the third fewest goals against in the NHL. But in each of the three games of the trip, Washington fell down in the first and found itself chasing the game the rest of the night.
While that proved to be a losing formula against the Lightning and the Panthers, the Caps were at least able to avoid their first fruitless trip of three game or more in over five years by scraping a point out of the trip finale in St. Louis.
"It's three in a row where we've been outdone in the first," laments Caps coach Peter Laviolette, "and at that point you're chasing the game. I thought we were going to catch it tonight; I thought we were going to get there."
Once again, the Caps dug themselves a deep hole in the first frame, finishing the first in a three-goal hole. Brayden Schenn put the Blues on the board just head of the five-minute mark of the opening frame, beating Caps goalie Charlie Lindgren with a shot to the short side off the rush at 4:56 of the first.
Just over two minutes later, Blues winger Pavel Buchnevich scored on a wraparound to double the St. Louis lead to 2-0 at 7:10.
St. Louis then struck on its first power play opportunity of the evening, getting a Torey Krug goal on a center point drive at 11:49. The Blues scored their three goals on five shots in a span of 6 minutes and 53 seconds. Thursday's first period left the Caps down a cumulative 8-0 in the first period of the three games of the trip; they were outshot 39-22, out-attempted 64-48 and opponents owned a lopsided 17-3 advantage in first-period high-danger scoring chances in the first as well, according to naturalstattrick.com.
Thursday's game also marked the third time in as many games on the trip that the Caps yielded a power-play goal on their first penalty-killing mission of the night.
"We didn't press enough offensively," says Laviolette of the first frame. "I don't think we gave up that much defensively, but we've got to push more from the start. I don't think we brought enough pucks to the net, and we didn't bring enough people to the net. And I thought after the first, we got going."
The Caps came out with some fire in the second, pouring nine shots on the St. Louis net before the Blues could register their first shot of the period. But Blues goalie Thomas Greiss kept then scoresheet clean until just after the final television timeout of the middle period.
Eight seconds after a face-off at the St. Louis line, Washington got on the board. Dylan Strome pulled the puck off the right-wing half wall and threaded a feed to the middle for Alex Ovechkin, who found himself with enough time and space to put a shot to the roof from the slot, making it a 3-1 game at 15:12 of the second.
Less than a minute later, the Blues went on the power play, but it was the Caps that cashed in with their second shorthanded goal of the season. Playing in his 900th NHL game, John Carlson called his own number on a 2-on-1 rush, beating Greiss to make it a 3-2 contest at 17:36, with 22 seconds remaining on the kill for Washington.
Four seconds after the penalty expired, the Blues got the goal back on a Ryan O'Reilly backhander that he tucked under the bar at 18:02.
Early in the third, Greiss made stellar saves to rob Sonny Milano and Lars Eller from in tight, but the Caps kept hammering away, and as was the case in the second period, their persistence paid off late in the frame.
Carlson netted his second of the night at 15:45 of the third, a one-timer on the power play with Lindgren on the bench for a sixth attacker. That goal ended an 0-for-23 stretch for the Capitals' power play unit.
Just over a minute later, the Caps were finally even thanks to Sheary's tying tally with 3:03 left. He finished off a feed from Evgeny Kuznetsov down low to make it 4-4.
Nic Dowd briefly appeared to have given Washington its first lead of the road trip when he swatted a puck out of midair and past Greiss, but a subsequent video review showed that his stick was just above the crossbar at the time, washing the goal away and essentially sending it into overtime.
Lindgren kept the game alive with a brilliant stop on Robert Thomas in overtime, but the Caps could manage only one shootout strike in six tries while the Blues tallied twice.
"I think it's another good effort," says Carlson. "Right now, the way things are going, we've just got to play a lot tighter than that, I guess. Sometimes these spells happen where it doesn't go your way at certain times and it seems like we deserve it sometimes and sometimes we don't. But regardless of that, we've got to play a better game to win. I think we deserved to win, though."