Caps Fall to Rangers, 5-2

The Caps dropped a 5-2 decision to the New York Rangers on Sunday afternoon at Capital One Arena, and by the latter stages of the contest, the accumulated frustration of a season and a second half gone south was evident.

With less than four minutes remaining in the game, Caps' captain Alex Ovechkin was assessed a 10-minute misconduct and a minor for cross-checking New York's Barclay Goodrow, and a pair of fights broke out in the aftermath of the penalty on Ovechkin. Tom Wilson fought Goodrow and Martin Fehervary fought Niko Mikkola.
The Caps weren't unhappy with their start on Sunday, but they still fell into a multi-goal hole early in the game when the Rangers struck twice in the span of just over two minutes in the game's first period.
"The first 10 minutes were good, the shots were low, and it was tight out there," says Caps' coach Peter Laviolette. "And they ended up getting the first goal, 13 or 12 minutes in or whatever it was, and another one shortly after that. And so you walk away from a period and you're down 2-0. It's not the way you want the period to go; you want to get a lead, build on the lead, and we weren't able to do that."
Blueshirts' blueliner K'Andre Miller staked his team to a 1-0 lead at 13:17 of the first, backhanding the rebound of a Vincent Trocheck shot into a yawning cage from the bottom of the right circle.
Just over two minutes later, the Rangers doubled their lead when Filip Chytil issued a feed to Alexis Lafreniere, who shimmied around Caps' defenseman Rasmus Sandin and put a backhander behind Caps' goaltender Darcy Kuemper at 15:19.
New York extended its lead to 3-0 on a Kaapo Kakko goal from the slot exactly a minute into the middle period.
Rangers' goaltender Igor Shesterkin shook off a breakaway bid from Fehervary in the front half of the second period, and New York killed off a two-man disadvantage of 47 seconds in duration in the middle of the middle frame, but the Caps got on the board when Ovechkin sent Dylan Strome into New York ice and the Washington pivot netted his 19th goal of the season to make it a 3-1 game at 13:23.
The goal moves Strome to within one of his third 20-goal season in the NHL, and also gives him 58 points (19 goals, 39 assists), erasing his previous career best of 57 points in 2018-19, a season he split between Arizona and Chicago.
New York's Vladimir Tarasenko restored the Rangers' three-goal cushion with a snipe from the left circle off the rush at 5:53 of the third period, and Shesterkin followed that up by making probably his best save of the day a couple minutes later, robbing Nicolas Aube-Kubel with a glove snare on a shot from point blank range.
About four minutes later, the Caps put together one of their better offensive zone possession shifts of recent vintage, creating movement, chaos, and scoring chances, and culminating in Aliaksei Protas' fourth goal of the season - and first since Nov. 11 - to make it a 4-2 game at 11:44.
What Washington believed to be a weak interference call on Conor Sheary in the back half of the third resulted in a Mika Zibanejad power-play goal with one second remaining on Sheary's sentence, a goal that made it a 5-2 game with just 5:46 remaining.
When the scraps broke out all over the ice a little over two minutes later and a slew of late penalties were doled out, Ovechkin was eventually summoned from the box and sent to the locker room, given that his sentence extended well beyond the time remaining. The captain slowly skated in that direction while issuing exaggerated mock applause at the calls.
Washington's run of eight straight postseason appearances will end this spring, and the accumulated frustration of seeing five teammates traded away ahead of the March 3 trade deadline, watching as the club's man-games lost to injury surpassed 400 last week and seeing its season slowly spiral in the wrong direction in the second half seems to be piling up for the Caps, who dropped their fourth straight game (0-3-1) on Sunday.
"I think [Ovechkin] was frustrated that there was something missed down at the other end, and so he was frustrated coming back in [to Washington's end]," explains Laviolette of Ovechkin's misconduct. "Our guys played hard and with emotion, but with some of the goals that we let in, there's things that we could have and needed to do better defensively. We had numbers back, and I think it all kind of [accumulated]. A missed call, and you have to kill the Sheary penalty, and then there's a missed call and the frustration grows a little bit.
"You look at the scoreboard, and those situations - to me - they add up a little bit and you get frustrated. But it's probably to be expected."
The Caps haven't led at any point in those last four contests, another recurring theme in the second half where they've found themselves chasing the scoreboard too frequently. In their 36 games in the second half of the season, the Caps have held a scoreboard lead for just 489 minutes and 31 seconds, more than only the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Anaheim Ducks over that span.
"I think it's been a trend for a while," says Strome, of playing catch-up hockey. "We talked about this a couple of weeks ago and it was the same kind of thing where we got down early and then we start playing good, and by that point it's too late."
Rangers' coach Gerard Gallant was happy with his team's start, and with its overall game and execution in Sunday's contest. With Sunday's win, the Blueshirts improve to 10-2-2 in their last 14 games.
"That was exactly the start, and the finish [we were looking for]," he says. "It was a good, solid 60 minutes and a real good way to finish our road trip. Now we have a couple days off here, and go back home."