The Caps conclude a three-game Western road trip on Monday afternoon in Vegas when they take on the Golden Knights for the second and final time this season. Monday's game will be the rubber match of the trip for the Caps; they came from behind to earn a 3-2 victory over the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday night in Denver but fell 3-1 to the Coyotes in Arizona on Saturday.
Three weeks ago, the Caps returned from their midseason break with a 4-2 win over the Canadiens in Montreal, a victory that gave Washington a four-game winning streak, its fourth streak of that length or longer this season. But in the three weeks since, the Caps have been unable to string together consecutive wins. Nearly three-quarters of the way through the season and with the NHL's trade deadline now just a week away, the Capitals still have not gone as many as three games without collecting points this season. But they're a very ordinary 10-9-0 in their last 19 games, and they've won only three of eight games since the win over the Habs on Jan. 27.
For most of the last six or seven weeks, the Caps have scuffled in their own end of the ice. They allowed 28 goals in a seven-game stretch just before heading out on the road, and they've managed to get the goals against under control on the current journey, permitting exactly two goals in each of the first two games of the trip. It's the first time in more than a month - since Jan. 13-16 - that the Caps have had two straight games with two or fewer goals against, and they haven't put together three such games in a row since running the table on the California trip from Dec. 3-6.
Seemingly, they've staunched the bleeding in their own end to some degree. Now, they also need to ratchet their offensive game up. Washington has managed just five goals at 5-on-5 in its last four games.
"I think we seem to be scoring around the net, that's where we have been able to have our success," says Caps coach Todd Reirden. "If you look at our goals as of late, we're getting some chances, hitting some posts, and we're going into this trip and a couple days before that we knew we were going through a little bit of a rough patch with our team, but we're finding our way.
"It's not going to be easy in the long run going through these types of games. And having tough times scoring makes you focus on your defensive play because at times that's not going to be there. For us, we want to work from our end out, and when we get those chances as we move forward here, we have plenty of skill and ability to be able to convert on those and right now were just not finding the back of the net."
