Coming into Friday night’s game against the Pittsburgh Penguins at Capital One Arena, the Caps led the NHL in lead time on home ice; they had played 288 minutes and 49 seconds of their first eight home games with the lead.
For the first time this season, Washington wasn’t able to add to its home ice lead time on Friday; it fell into an early two-goal hole against the Pens before clawing its way to even in the second. But for the first time in the last five home games, the Caps yielded a goal in the third period. And that Evgeni Malkin goal proved to be the game-winner in a 4-2 Pittsburgh victory.
Pittsburgh’s win ended a six-game road slide (0-4-2) and Washington’s loss ended a seven-game home winning streak, the team’s longest in more than six years.
“We were not good to start,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “You could tell that we potentially underestimated how competitive the game was going to be in that first 20 minutes, and then we got caught up in the second and figured it out. But you spot [the Penguins] two [goals], so we’re chasing the game from the start.”
For the first time this season, the Caps found themselves down two goals in the first period of a game. Pens defenseman Erik Karlsson drifted into the slot untouched, took a feed from Malkin and buried it at 3:11 of the first to stake Pittsburgh to an early 1-0 lead.
Less than four minutes later, Pens winger Michael Bunting drove the net and managed to reach out and score with one hand, redirecting a Karlsson feed over Caps’ goaltender Charlie Lindgren to make it a 2-0 game at 6:59.
One of the Capitals’ hallmarks early this season is their ability to respond quickly after an opposition goal. The Caps did so again in this instance, cutting the Pens’ advantage less than two minutes after the Bunting goal.
Connor McMichael gained Pittsburgh ice on the left side, then turned and fed the late-arriving Rasmus Sandin, who carried lower into the zone while surveying his options. Sandin ultimately made a good decision, which was to fire a shot past Pens’ goalie Joel Blomqvist high on the short side, cutting the lead to 2-1 at 8:22.
Early in the middle frame, the Caps pulled even. Washington was whistled for a phantom icing call, one that was protested vociferously by the normally mild-mannered Jakub Vrana. The Caps lost the ensuing defensive zone draw, and the Pens narrowly missed the net on a deflection of a Karlsson point drive.
When the puck got loose high in Washington ice, Vrana blazed after it, creating a 2-on-1 with Andrew Mangiapane. Vrana sauced his linemate a perfect backhand feed, and Mangiapane beat Blomqvist to square the score at 2-2 at 6:04 of the middle period, 14 seconds after Washington lost the draw in its own end.
With the game evened up, and facing a team that had already lost four games in which it led by two goals this season, the Caps seemed to be in a good position. Throughout much of the second, they looked like the same team that had rolled out to a 9-3-0 start; they were generating and creating scoring chances, and they were getting pucks to the net. The difference this time was Blomqvist, who denied their every opportunity the rest of the way. Against the rookie Finnish goaltender, the Caps could not finish.
Blomqvist denied Tom Wilson from in tight just after the midpoint of the middle period. He thwarted Alex Ovechkin in a 1-on-1 situation a couple minutes later. And at the other end of the ice, Lindgren was doing the same. A game that began with three goals in the first nine minutes turned into a goaltending duel.
In the third, the Pens displayed a grim determination that they were not going to squander another two-goal lead. Suddenly, Washington was unable to gain the Pittsburgh zone with any regularity, and when it did break in, it was one- or none-and-done.
The stalemate continued until just after the midpoint of the third. The Caps were in Pittsburgh’s zone until Wilson’s feed to the front from behind the Pens’ net started the Pittsburgh breakout, with Bryan Rust carrying down the left side and into Washington ice with Malkin on his right. The Caps had the Pens outnumbered – there were four red sweaters back – but Rust was still able to cut to the cage and put a shot on net from in tight. Lindgren stopped it, but Malkin swooped in and deposited the rebound, lifting the Pens to a 3-2 lead at 10:30.
The Caps had a power play of 80 seconds in duration later in the third, but their struggling extra-man unit couldn’t manufacture the equalizer. The Caps were 0-for-3 with the extra man in Friday’s game, and they remain at the bottom of the League with an efficiency rate of just 8.7 percent (4-for-46) on the season.
Noel Acciari’s last minute empty-net goal accounted for the 4-2 final.
“Obviously, they’re a desperate hockey team,” says Lindgren of the Pens. “They need to stack up some wins. And even if it was a back-to-back [for them], you couldn’t tell. Right from the get-go, you could tell they had their legs and you could see how much this game meant to them.”
Friday’s win allows the Pens to return home with a respectable 1-1-1 record on a three-game Metro Division road trip in which they played three games in four nights. Their ability to shut the door on the Caps in the third ended their road slide.
“I thought it was one of our more complete periods, just digging in,” says Pens’ coach Mike Sullivan. “I’m really proud of the guys. That team is playing extremely well right now; they check hard, and they’ve won a lot of games.”
