Caps Drop 3-2 Decision in Denver

Following an ugly 6-2 setback to the Golden Knights in Vegas on Saturday, the Caps were seeking a good bounce back effort on Tuesday in Denver against the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche. The Caps got the bounce back, but not enough of the bounces, falling 3-2 to the Avs in the finale of a three-game trip out west.

While all the pregame chatter and focus surrounded Caps' captain Alex Ovechkin and whether or not he would miss a second consecutive contest with a lower body injury (he would not), the Caps lost two other key performers on Tuesday night. Nicklas Backstrom wasn't able to suit up and play because of non-Covid illness, and the Caps lost right wing Tom Wilson to a lower body injury when he blocked a Brad Hunt point shot just before the midpoint of the second period.
"Nobody wants to miss the game, no matter what," says Ovechkin. "But yeah, it's tough. But the guys stepped up and played well. Unfortunately, we didn't get another [goal], but the effort and the battle level were very high for us."
Playing at altitude and down to 11 forwards for half the night, the Caps got some sturdy performances from several players, and they generated and created a number of excellent chances, but Colorado netminder Alexandar Georgiev was a deserving first star on this night with 37 saves to earn his 19th win of the season and Colorado's sixth straight victory.
"I thought the guys played hard," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "There was things on the goals [against] that I wish we did better defensively, and just mistakes, not from a lack of effort, just a little bit of the details.
"But I thought our guys showed up and attacked from the get-go, and when you're attacking like that, sometimes you leave yourself a little bit vulnerable. There's some things inside of the system we could have done a little bit better, but for the most part I thought the guys played hard."
Washington fell down by a goal before the midpoint of the first. The Avs broke out of their zone on a 2-on-1 rush. Nathan MacKinnon gained the Caps' zone, and Caps defenseman Dmitry Orlov shook the puck off him with a sturdy hit, only to have the disc go right to Artturi Lehkonen, who quickly fired it home from the slot for a 1-0 Avalanche lead at 8:57.
The Caps weren't able to pull even with a pair of power plays in the back half of the first, and Colorado doubled its advantage early in the second. After the Avs won a protracted puck battle behind the Washington net, Logan O'Connor pushed it out to the left point where Kurtis MacDermid wound up and let it fly. Andrew Cogliano was parked in front, and he caught a piece of it with his pants before it bounded off the post and nestled into the Washington net for a 2-0 Avs lead at 2:04 of the second.
Washington responded quickly, getting on the board less than three minutes later. Conor Sheary made a great hustle play to negate a certain icing, and then went to work on the forecheck. Seconds later, Anthony Mantha got the puck from low to high on the left side, feeding Martin Fehervary at the left point. Sheary deflected Fehervary's shot behind Georgiev at 4:48 to make it 2-1.
Late in the period, Colorado restored its two-goal cushion by going 200 feet in 10 seconds after a draw in its own end. Aliaksei Protas was credited with a face-off win over Alex Newhook on the draw, but it was Colorado's Samuel Girard who came to possess the puck below his own goal line. He put a high flip out to neutral ice as Newhook galloped out of the zone, and O'Connor bumped it to Newhook in neutral ice, enabling the Avs center to collect it at top speed. Carrying the puck on his backhand, Newhook gained the zone and went wide, then abruptly went to his forehand and ripped a shot past Darcy Kuemper on the far side at 15:39, making it a 3-1 game.
"Great play by our [defenseman] to get it out," recounts Newhook. "Set play for us to get it out of the zone so our wingers pull out. Great touch back to me, and thought I had a step on the [Caps' defenseman] there. I tried to just take it to the net and put it on Kuemps."
The Caps pressed hard in the third, and they were able to close to within a goal after a Colorado icing midway through the final frame. Dylan Strome won the draw, but Ovechkin wasn't able to pull the trigger from the pocket, and the puck drifted out to the right point where Strome was able to make an excellent play to strip MacKinnon and keep him from exiting with speed. Strome put it on a tee for Ovechkin, whose one-timer from his left dot office eluded Georgiev to make it 3-2 at 9:44. Only eight seconds elapsed between the draw and the goal.
Washington kept bringing pucks to the net, and Georgiev kept keeping them out. Arguably his best save of the night came when it mattered most, with 1:14 left and Kuemper pulled for an extra attacker. That's when Georgiev leaped laterally to his right to take away a yawning cage from Erik Gustafsson from the bottom of the left circle.
While the bounce back effort and performance were there, the bounces and the breaks did not go Washington's way on Thursday, and they'll head home with just two of a possible six points from their three-game journey.
"I think it's definitely something we can build off," says Sheary. "At the beginning of the second, we didn't come out to play and we let them score that [Cogliano] goal. That kind of hurt us, but overall I think for 50-55 minutes of that game, we like the way we played. We controlled play, got a lot of chances, and their goalie made a lot of big saves at the end. It just wasn't the result [we were looking for], but something to build off going home."