Caps Fall to Seattle in OT, 3-2

Washington was a few minutes away from winning a game in which it was outplayed on Thursday night in Seattle, but the two points turned out to be a mirage. After yielding the tying goal late in regulation, the Caps lost seven seconds into overtime when Seattle's Matty Beniers won the opening faceoff and barreled his way through the middle to score, completing a Kraken comeback and giving Seattle a 3-2 overtime victory at Climate Pledge Arena.

Beniers' goal completed a Kraken comeback from an early two-goal deficit, extending Seattle's franchise record winning streak to seven straight games.
"The face-off went backwards, which was good," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "They plowed through it, got two guys through and they popped the puck."
The Caps have played well recently, but that wasn't the case on this night. The best part of Washington's game on Thursday at Climate Pledge Arena was its defense in front of goaltender Darcy Kuemper, but ultimately it was because the rest of the Caps' game was so shoddy that they spent far too much of the game in their own end, blocking shots, breaking up passes and wasting energy that might have been used in a more assertive fashion, to build upon an early 2-0 lead.
"I didn't like the first [period]," says Laviolette. "The scoreboard was showing 2-0, but the first, the second and the third - they weren't good enough. The scoreboard said one thing in the first, we tried to address it after the first, and just not enough of the good stuff tonight. Not enough of the right things."
The Caps managed only four shots on net in the first frame, but the middle two of them both found twine. Ahead of the midpoint of the opening period, Alex Ovechkin gained the Seattle zone on the right side and dropped a feed for Conor Sheary. Sheary held it briefly along the wall down low before putting a feed to the middle that missed the mark but found its way to Martin Fehervary lurking above the circle on the weak side. Fehervary wound up and cranked a shot past Philipp Grubauer for a 1-0 Washington lead at 7:36 of the first.
Soon after a spirited scrap between T.J. Oshie and Seattle's Yanni Gourde, the Caps went on a power play when Jordan Eberle was boxed for a tripping violation in the offensive zone. With Sheary occupying Oshie's bumper spot on the power play, the Caps went to work with the extra man. After some exemplary puck movement, Sheary struck from the slot at 14:04, doubling the #Caps' lead on a tee up from Marcus Johansson.
In between the two Washington goals, Kuemper made a pair of good stops to keep the Kraken off the board. He denied Eberle in a 1-on-1 situation coming down the wing and also set aside a Jared McCann backhander.
Beyond the midpoint of the middle frame each team still had single-digit shot totals, the Kraken because the Caps kept laying out to block them and Washington because it didn't spend nearly enough time in Seattle ice, particularly at 5-on-5. But Seattle cut into the Caps' lead in the back half of the second, doing so on its second power play of the night.
Vince Dunn's point drive missed the mark, but it took a favorable carom off the back wall right to Jaden Schwartz, who was parked just off the left post. He elevated it from in tight, tucking it under the bar to cut the Caps' cushion to 2-1 at 13:28.
With just over a minute left in the second, Grubauer made the save of the night to deny Evgeny Kuznetsov on the doorstep, following a spinning feed from Oshie on a short ice 2-on-1.
Washington had an early power play in the third, but it failed to restore its two-goal lead. Seattle kept coming at the Caps throughout the final frame, but the Kraken again gave the Caps an opportunity to pair their lead when Beniers was boxed for an offensive zone interference violation with 7:45 remaining. But all it did was give the Caps a two-minute break from defending.
With 2:27 left, Gourde scored the inevitable tying tally, and the Caps have to be thankful to take a point with them as they head to Calgary for a Saturday night date with the Flames.
Washington didn't have the puck for much of the night, and it exacerbated the situation with some poor puck decisions and execution, turning it over and shortening the ice for Seattle on too many occasions and leading to far too much time in its own end. At night's end, the Caps were on the short end of a lopsided 63-30 disparity in 5-on-5 shot attempts, and they finished with a mere 15 shots on net at 5-on-5. Washington also blocked as many shots (25) as the Kraken put on Kuemper.
"We had a ton of blocks tonight, and we were definitely laying it on the line," says Kuemper. "Unfortunately, we got one with a couple of minutes left. But [we got] one point; we'll take it and move on, learn from the mistakes and also the good things we did tonight and move forward."