Two nights after special teams fueled a 5-2 victory over the St. Louis Blues in Washington, the Caps and Blues tangled again in St. Louis on Saturday night at Enterprise Center. This time the Blues turned the tables on the Caps, blanking Washington 3-0 in a victory that was again sparked by special teams.
Colton Parayko’s shorthanded goal in the third minute of the first period turned out to be all the offense Blues’ goalie Jordan Binnington would need to record his second shutout of the season and the 14th of his NHL career, but the Blues tacked on one more goal in each period. St. Louis captain Brayden Schenn scored on a delayed Washington penalty in the second and Jake Neighbours scored on a St. Louis power play in the third.
But you can’t win without scoring, and Saturday night was a night of regression for Washington’s already impaired offense.
“A lot, a lot,” reiterated Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery when asked what didn’t go right for his team. “[We] didn’t get near enough activity near Binnington. Puck play was as bad as it’s been all year, in terms of stringing passes together tape-to-tape, whether that was coming out of our zone, [or] off entries. [We] just really struggled to handle pucks, to then be able to make anything happen offensively, and frankly, to even get to that part of the game."
Aside from the Parayko goal, Washington’s start wasn’t terrible in the span between the opening puck drop and the game’s first television timeout; the Caps were swarming in the St. Louis end early, and Connor McMichael drew a penalty that put them on the game’s first power play just 2:15 into the first.
But early in that power play, Parayko skated from his own end into Washington ice, with support to his left. Parayko gained the zone and opted to shoot, firing a wrist shot from just above the top of the right circle and past the outstretched glove hand of Caps’ goalie Charlie Lindgren, lifting the Blues to a 1-0 lead at 2:37 of the first.
The goal was the first shorthanded tally of Parayko’s 621-game NHL career.
Not only did Washington not score during the remaining portion of that early power play, the Caps seemed to lose whatever early mojo or momentum they had generated. At the game’s first television timeout at 6:34 of the first, naturalstattrick.com had the Caps with a 10-4 lead in even-strength shot attempts, and a 5-1 bulge in even-strength scoring chances. But the Caps then went dry for much of the rest of the frame and even the game; they were held without a shot on net for more than 11 minutes in the first, managing just five by period’s end, only two of which came from inside of 30 feet away.
Lindgren kept the Caps in the game with a pair of big stops on St. Louis winger Pavel Buchnevich, the first one from the slot early in the frame and the second one a lateral, left pad stop to cover up a turnover in front of him.
Things didn’t improve much for the visitors in the middle period. An early power play bore no fruit, and minutes later, the Blues doubled their lead when Schenn cranked a one-timer past Lindgren during a delayed penalty at 7:44.
The Caps’ looks, opportunities, offensive-zone time and puck possession were all severely limited at 5-on-5. St. Louis routinely took away time and space soon after the Caps were able to enter the Blues’ end of the ice, and many of those forays produced little or nothing offensively.
When Washington went on the power play with just under four minutes remaining in the second, it was clearly crunch time. The Caps hadn’t had a shot on the St. Louis net in more than seven minutes at that point. They were able to summon the required urgency on that man advantage, but they lacked finish.
Binnington denied Alex Ovechkin on a back door look early in the man advantage, and then he stymied Dylan Strome twice in short succession from the top of the paint. A goal there would have halved the lead, but the Caps weren’t able to execute, and the third period proved to be their most fallow of the game on a night of diminishing returns.
“We just weren’t crisp at all, for really any of the 60 minutes,” laments Caps’ winger T.J. Oshie. “We had one power play that we were working it around pretty good, and we had about three Grade A’s. You pop one of those, I think it’s a little bit different game. But they were definitely the better team tonight. We knew they were going to come out hard, and we didn’t respond.”
In the third, the Caps were held without a shot on net for more than 10 minutes, and Neighbors drew a penalty to put the Blues on the power play in the back half of the third. With 4:09 left, he tipped home a Thomas shot to account for the 3-0 final.
When it was all said and done, the Caps and Blues traded three-goal, home ice victories that were rooted in special teams play.
“It almost felt like they flipped the script on us a little bit tonight,” says Lindgren. “It wasn't our best start tonight, obviously. It’s never easy, too, when they score on that first shot; it gets us behind early, and then we’re just trying to play catch up the rest of the way. We knew it was going to be a lot tougher coming into their building, and it's always a really tough place to play.”
Binnington needed to make just 18 saves on the night; Saturday’s game marked the fifth time Washington has been shutout and the fourth time it has been limited to fewer than 20 shots on net in 44 games this season.
Binnington’s whitewash of Washington is the fifth by a Blues goaltender, and the first since Jake Allen blanked the Caps 4-0 on March 26, 2016 at Capital One Arena.
