Caps Conclude Homestand vs. Cats
Caps and Panthers meet Thursday in D.C. as Washington seeks to shake offensive doldrums
In the midst of what should be a joyous week of celebrating the game of hockey and its outdoor roots, a somber atmosphere has instead crept into the Capitals' locker room this week with the loss of Mikhail Ovechkin, father of Caps' captain Alex Ovechkin.
Roughly 24 hours after the team announced on Tuesday that Alex Ovechkin would take a leave of absence to attend to an ailing loved one, the Caps announced the passing of the 71-year-old patriarch of the Ovechkin family, a longtime fixture at MedStar Capitals Iceplex and Capital One Arena. Mikhail Ovechkin loved watching his superstar son ply his trade on the ice while interacting with the team's fans, with the game of hockey as the common bond and means of communication between them.
"Obviously, everybody was aware in the room of what's going on," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "Alex sent a text to the players and to the organization to let us know. And you it's just really sad. You feel for him and pray for him and his family."
Playing without their captain against Metropolitan Division-leading Carolina on Tuesday night, the Caps put forth a valiant effort that would have been sufficient to earn two points on many nights, but the Hurricanes prevailed 3-2 in the first of two meetings between the two teams this week. The second of those meetings is this Saturday in Raleigh in the Navy Federal Credit Union NHL Stadium Series game, Washington's first outdoor foray in nearly five years.
Before that game on Saturday, Washington will seek to salvage something from a three-game homestand on Thursday night when the Florida Panthers make the first of their two visits to the District this season. The Caps enter Thursday's game on the heels of setbacks in each of the first two games of the homestand, a 4-1 loss to San Jose on Sunday afternoon and Tuesday's loss to the Hurricanes.
As the Caps and Cats get set to tangle for the first time since a mid-November meeting in Florida, they are separated by a mere two points in the standings.
Since returning from their 10-day break for the NHL's All-Star weekend/bye week, the Caps have won one of three games, taking a 2-1 win over the Bruins in Boston on Saturday afternoon. The aforementioned pair of home ice losses followed, and there are two overarching - and likely related - themes for the Caps these days: they're always missing key players and they can't seem to score enough goals, which sometimes leads to losses in games in which they play well enough to win (see: Tuesday night vs. Carolina).
Washington played Tuesday's game without Ovechkin, the second game that Ovechkin has missed this season. Washington was also without Nic Dowd and Tom Wilson on Tuesday; both players remain sidelined with lower body injuries. Aliaksei Protas was a late scratch as he hustled to the hospital to join his wife as she gave birth to the couple's first child, a daughter, born just after midnight in the early minutes of Wednesday morning.
Joe Snively was recalled from AHL Hershey to replace Ovechkin on the roster, and he was a late emergency replacement for Protas in Tuesday's lineup. Seeing NHL action for the first time since Dec. 31, Snively made his presence felt, setting up Washington's first goal and scoring its second in the loss to Carolina. Snively seized the opportunity and was impressive in his return, but the Caps still managed to score just those two goals, the seventh straight home game in which they've been limited to two or fewer tallies and the seventh time in their last eight games overall in which they haven't been able to light the lamp as many as three times.
Snively now has five goals and 10 points in his 19 career NHL games, and his two-point night on Tuesday was much needed for a team missing so many key players that has been struggling offensively of late.
"It's always nice to contribute on the scoresheet," said Snively after the game. "It was nice just to get back in the National, too. Even though we unfortunately lost, it was a lot of fun."
The Caps' current streak of seven straight home games with two or fewer goals scored is the second longest in franchise history. Washington went nine straight home games - the final home game of the 1997-98 season and the first eight home games of the ill-fated and injury-riddled 1998-99 season without mustering more than two goals in any of those games. The Caps went 2-5-2 in those nine games a quarter of a century ago. They're 2-5-0 in their last seven home games as they enter Thursday's game with Florida.
Last year's President's Trophy-winning Panthers team ousted the Caps in the first round of the playoffs before being summarily swept aside by cross-state rival Tampa Bay in the second round. Over the summer, the Panthers moved longtime fixture Jonathan Huberdeau to Calgary and made another coaching change, hiring longtime NHL bench boss Paul Maurice.
In the wake of all that change, the Panthers have had a much more middling season in 2022-23, and they have yet to string together more than three straight victories, a minor feat they've only achieved once to this point of the campaign, and that was recent. The Cats won three in a row wrapped around their bye week, taking a 4-3 overtime win over Boston in their final game before the break and drubbing Tampa Bay and San Jose, respectively, right out of the break.
But even without a lengthy stretch of sustained success this season, the Panthers are in the thick of the chase for the two Eastern Conference playoff berths, largely because they've also been able to avoid any lengthy droughts. Florida's longest losing streak is also three games, and they've only lost three straight games in regulation once all season.
