Caps Conclude Trip in Colorado
Following a travel day and a practice day, Caps get set to take on Avalanche in Denver
The Caps conclude their three-game trip out west on Tuesday night in Denver when they take on the Colorado Avalanche at Ball Arena. Tuesday's game is the rubber match of the trip for Washington, which won by four goals (4-0) on Thursday in Arizona in the trip opener before falling by four tallies (6-2) two nights later in Vegas against the Golden Knights.
Caps captain Alex Ovechkin missed Saturday's game with a lower body injury, the first of Washington's 49 games he has missed this season. Winger T.J. Oshie returned home to D.C. from Vegas; he and wife Lauren are awaiting the birth of their fourth child later this week.
Washington flew to Denver on Sunday morning, and took the remainder of the day off for some needed rest; Saturday's game was the Caps' fifth in a span of eight nights. The Caps did reconvene for a Monday afternoon practice here in Denver, and in meetings before that session they discussed Saturday's loss in Vegas.
"We talked about it," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "I think we've been playing some pretty good hockey as of late. Everything that we did in that game wasn't of the same direction that we were moving in before that; and I thought that we were pretty good defensively and pretty good offensively, and I liked the things that we were doing. And so it didn't happen for us in that game.
"We did go back and look at it today, and we talked about it, and now we're past it. It was a great practice out there today; I thought the guys really moved good with pace and getting ready for [Tuesday]. It's going to be a tough game."
Ovechkin was on the ice for the entirety of Monday's practice, and he was one of the first players on the ice ahead of the start of that session. But his status for Tuesday's game with the Avs is still uncertain.
"I thought he looked good," says Laviolette of Ovechkin. "But he is still day-to-day. It was good to get him back out there, though. He looked good; he was moving well out there."
For the Caps, Saturday's setback was out of character with its recent play, and it was Washington's first loss by more than two goals since a 5-2 loss to the Flames in Calgary on Dec. 3, a game in which the Caps trailed 2-1 after 40 minutes and in which the fifth Calgary goal was into an empty net. The Caps have typically been on the right side of multi-goal victories this season; Washington is tied for third in the NHL with 15 wins by three or more goals and it ranks in the middle of the pack with nine losses in such games.
In the three seasons in which Peter Laviolette has been behind the Washington bench, the team has played to a .623 points percentage (105-59-23). Including Saturday's loss in Vegas, the Caps have lost by three or more goals on 30 occasions in those 187 games, and in the previous 29 they have fashioned a 19-8-2 record, a points percentage of .690.
In other words, they tend to respond well to bad beats. Following Monday's practice session here in Denver, Caps center Evgeny Kuznetsov was asked what it is about the team that spurs such a response following occasional and uncharacteristic bad beats. His response was eloquent and lengthy, but deserves to be read in its entirety.
"I think it's a lot about the leadership group," begins Kuznetsov, "and maybe players not in the leadership group, but players that inside of this team, they care. They care about each other and they know that even inside of the bad games, somebody maybe doesn't have a bad game. But every time you see a partner or your teammate have a bad game, you want him to be able to be successful next game, and you respond to be able to do that for him. You have to be good too, so he can be successful.
"So I feel like we always support. We know how we can play and how we have to play, and sometimes the game is like that. I'm looking at it from actually a positive standpoint. When things are good, you're all in and it's good. But once in a while, this happens. That's when [somebody says], 'Okay, that's it guys, let's regroup. We had the run, that's it now. It's time to go back to work again, and start over.'
"That's why I said at the beginning of my career here that I like to be inside of this group. It's always been players that maybe are not talking too much, but when it's game time and time to respond, they always respond. And they respond on the ice. It doesn't have to be, 'Let's go, boys!' or whatever that [B.S.] is, right?
"Some people don't like to talk, but then first shift, that's it. That's how some players say, 'I'm okay, guys. Here we go, I am here to play.' And I feel like pretty much all of the time we've been able to do that.' And it's not even results-wise. We may lose another game, but the way we play and the way we started and the way we care about each other, that's what's been most important for me."
The defending Stanley Cup-champion Avalanche has had a rather uneven season to date. Going into Monday's slate of NHL activity, Colorado is tied with Calgary for the eighth and final playoff berth in the Western Conference.
Lately though, the Avs have been heating up. They will carry a five-game winning streak into Tuesday's game, which is the opener of a three-game homestand for Colorado.
The Avalanche just ran the table on a three-game road trip in a span of just four nights, vanquishing Calgary and Vancouver, respectively, by identical 4-1 scores and then edging Seattle 2-1 in a shootout in the back half of the back-to-back on Saturday night in the Emerald City.
