For just the third time this season – and the first time in more than two months – the Caps find themselves saddled with consecutive regulation losses. Blues blueliner Philip Broberg scored a pair of goals in the first frame on Thursday night at Capital One Arena as the Caps again started slowly against a desperate team trying to claw its way into the playoffs. The Caps were never able to play with a lead in Thursday’s game, and they found themselves on the short end of a 5-2 score at night’s end.
Thursday’s setback to St. Louis is just the third the Caps have suffered by a margin of three or more goals in 59 games this season, the fewest in the NHL.
“I feel like the last couple games just lacked a little bit of – whatever you want to call it – oomph,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “You can just feel it, and I’m sure you guys can see it. Just second on pucks and little things throughout the entire game. You could tell that we need to do a better job and we’ve got to find it. You know where we’re going with this is comfortable versus desperate, and we’re going to have to find that.”
Washington played Thursday’s game without Tom Wilson, who missed the game because of illness. Until Wilson was unable to go on Thursday, Washington had dressed the same 18 skaters for each of its previous 17 games.
Each of the Caps’ consecutive setbacks has come at the hands of a Western Conference foe that came into town outside of the playoff picture.
“We're playing teams right now that are hungry to be in the playoff race,” says Caps center P-L Dubois. “And it's not a switch you turn on in the playoffs. The game ramps up after bye week, and everybody knows that. These teams are hungry, those teams are hungry, those teams are hungry, and there's teams that are hungry to climb up in the standings. And being where we are in the standings, we’ve got our target on our backs; everybody's chasing us.
“So we're going to get the best of every team, every night. And that's a good thing. It's going to challenge us to be ready for the last 10, 15 games of the season. The race starts now for us too.”
The Caps twice managed to get the game tied up, once late in the first period and again late in the second, but each time the Blues quickly responded to regain the lead.
Broberg staked St. Louis to a 1-0 lead when he converted a Mathieu Joseph seam pass, firing a one-timer into a yawning cage from the right circle at 11:14 of the first period.
Dubois squared the score at 15:04, finishing with a flourish in front after Taylor Raddysh and Connor McMichael snapped a pair of sharp passes to set up Dubois’ backhander from the top of the paint.
But less than three minutes later, Jake Neighbours sent an indirect, rinkwide pass to space in Washington ice, and Broberg was first to it. He carried it straight to the cooker and tucked a backhander home to restore the St. Louis lead at 17:45.
The Caps were more assertive offensively in the second, but they weren’t able to pull even with the visitors until McMichael’s excellent individual effort produced the tying tally at 16:55. After taking a diagonal feed from Matt Roy down low on the left side, McMichael went up the left half wall and outfoxed both Jordan Kyrou and Oskar Sundqvist to maintain possession. McMichael then carved his way into the left circle and whipped a high shot past Joel Hofer to make it a 2-2 game at 16:55.
Again, the Blues responded quickly, and not just once.
First, Dylan Holloway tipped home a Ryan Suter shot at 17:23, giving the Blues the lead again less than half a minute after the McMichael marker. And 35 seconds after Holloway scored, Colton Parayko scored on a goalmouth scramble during a delayed penalty, sending the Blues into the second intermission with a 4-2 cushion.
“The next two shifts weren’t good enough. A bit of a mixed bag with guys going out there, but guys that should have been able to at least keep that shift even, and we didn’t do a good enough job on either of those shifts.”
Washington has authored a number of third-period comebacks this season, including some to overcome multi-goal deficits. But not on this night; despite a reshuffling of the forward lines and defense pairs, St. Louis held the Caps without a shot on net for the first seven and a half minutes of the third. Washington was blanked on six shots in the final frame, and Neighbours’ empty-net goal accounted for the 5-2 final, sending the Caps to their first defeat by a margin of three goals in over two months.
Before missing Thursday’s game, Wilson had been one of a dozen players to appear in each of Washington’s first 58 games this season.
“He is one of the biggest reasons why we are doing so well this season,” says Caps defenseman Martin Fehervary of his teammate. “And it definitely hurts us a lot when we’re missing him.”
“We missed him a ton,” concurs Carbery. “And the disappointing thing is when that happens, you lose not only what he does on the ice but what he brings leadership wise, personality wise, [he’s] vocal, I just didn’t feel like anybody – or a group of people, because nobody is going to replace Tom Wilson – and we just didn’t do enough to pick up the slack.”
St. Louis improves to 5-1-2 in its last eight games as it vies to mount a late surge into a playoff position.
“Defensively, I thought our sticks were excellent, I thought our angling was excellent,” says Blues coach Jim Montgomery. “I thought we were physical, and I thought we did a really good job of stopping at the house and protecting in front of [Hofer].”
