Andrej Vasilevskiy stopped all 31 shots he faced on Saturday night at Amalie Arena, blanking the Capitals for the 35th shutout of his NHL career, and his first ever in 21 starts against Washington. Vasilevskiy’s whitewash halted a personal three-game losing streak and also stopped the Capitals’ five-game winning spree.
“I will be a glad man when he leaves the League one day,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery of Vasilevskiy, who has strung together seven straight seasons with 30 or more victories.
Washington played a solid game, it did most of the things it had been doing all season in the offensive zone, but it couldn’t get any pucks behind the venerated netminder. Vasilevskiy got all the offense he would require on a Mitchell Chaffee goal in the second period, and the Lightning struck for two more quick goals early in the third.
“We talked this morning that they’ve got a good team, and they’ve got a top six that's as good as anybody in the NHL,” says Carbery. “So they're going to get you on your heels for a couple sequences. But overall, we created a ton of good looks. [Offensive] zone time was there, we defended fairly well, and checked fairly well for the most part. We just didn't have that polish, [that] finish, didn't make that play that we needed to make from anybody throughout that game.
The first period was remarkably even, and it was also the first time the Caps and their opponent played a scoreless first 20 minutes in seven Washington games this season.
Aliaksei Protas had a breakaway opportunity early in the first, but Vasilveskiy denied him. Most of the period was spent trading draws in each team’s end of the ice, and there was little in the way of flow until the back half of the frame when the two sides played over six and a half minutes without a whistle.
The Caps had a late power play chance in the first, an advantage that spilled into the opening seconds of the middle frame. They were limited to one late shot on net.
Early in the second period, the Lightning grabbed a 1-0 lead. Caps’ center P-L Dubois lost his stick as he tried to make a stick check on Lightning pivot Nick Paul along the left half wall in the Washington zone. Dubois retrieved his stick while Mikey Eyssimont teed up a shot for Paul from the upper half of the left circle. Mitchell Chaffee went to the net and made a deft deflection of Paul’s shot, tipping it over the shoulder of Caps’ goaltender Charlie Lindgren at 5:27.
Vasilevskiy was tested more in the second, but he was the equal of everything the Caps sent his way. He stopped Nic Dowd early in the period; the Washington center had just hopped on the ice and he took a feed on the weak side and fired from the left circle.
Washington had a fair amount of offensive zone time all night, and it was relatively efficient in sending pucks toward the net for tip and rebound opportunities. A couple of those looks dribbled just wide, and the Bolts defended the interior well on other opportunities.
Just after the midpoint of the middle frame, Dubois hit the post on a hard shot from the left circle. On his very next shift, Dubois had a pair of chances from in tight, but was denied on both.
Seeking to extend his career-high point streak to seven games, Dylan Strome was stopped on a bid from the slot late in the second, but he likely didn’t get as much oomph on the shot as he would have liked, either.
The Caps shut down Tampa Bay’s power play late in the second, and Washington entered the third still down a single puck.
Early in the third, the Lightning doubled its lead on an extended offensive zone shift. The Caps weren’t able to get a needed clear, and the ever-dangerous Nikita Kucherov found Brayden Point alone in front and fed him to make it a 2-0 contest at 2:26.
A shift later, it was 3-0. Anthony Cirelli teed up Conor Geekie for a one-timer in front, and the rookie didn’t miss, netting his first NHL goal at 3:10 of the third.
“I thought we played actually a pretty good hockey game,” says Lindgren, who made 18 saves on the night. “To come out of here with a loss it, you know, it doesn't feel good, obviously.
“I think we had some looks; it was 1-0 going into the third, and we know the next goal is going to be big. And unfortunately, we were on the wrong side of it. And then they potted another one pretty quick after that. When you're down three, it's obviously a mountain at that point.”
The shutout setback was the first suffered by the Caps since March 11 of this year when they fell by the same score in Winnipeg against the Jets and Connor Hellebuyck.
“We just couldn't make that last play,” says Carbery, “whether it was on a 2-on-1, whether it was in cold on Vasilevskiy, whether it was a rebound scoring chance opportunity, just couldn't make that last play tonight, which will happen from time to time. But the process is good. If you told me we were going to come down here and out-chance Tampa in their building, I’ll take that all day long. Some nights they don't go in for you.”
