Caps Hit the Road in Music City
Scuffling at home, Caps take to the road for their next four games, starting on Tuesday night in Nashville
The Caps take to the road on Tuesday when they face the Predators in Nashville their first visit to Music City in more than two years. Tuesday's game against the Preds starts a two-game road trip for the Capitals, and it's the first of four straight games away from the District.
Tuesday's game also marks the Nashville return of Caps coach Peter Laviolette to the city where he spent six seasons before coming to Washington, and where he led the Predators to the lone Stanley Cup Final appearance of their franchise history in 2017.
"Nashville was a great stop," says Laviolette. "In my career - and I'm fortunate to have been in it as long as I have - I've been in some great places, and I've got to work with some great organizations and some great players. And Nashville is certainly one of those places. It's a different feel from a traditional hockey market like Philly or Washington - a bigger city. I grew up in Boston, so it's a different feel from that.
"The location of the rink and the strip downtown and the energy that comes through there makes it pretty special, and the fans there do a really good job of supporting that team and getting behind it. There were a lot of good things that happened; we had a trip to the Final and some successful years. And so I have a lot of great memories there with a great organization, some great players and great fans."
Getting away from D.C. might not be a bad thing for the Capitals, who have lost five straight regulation games on home ice for the first time in nearly 15 years. After starting the season with points in 13 of their first 14 home games (9-1-4) this season, the Caps have fallen on hard times with just three wins in their last 13 home games (3-9-1).
Since roaring out to a 14-3-5 start to the season, the Caps have played to a much more ordinary 12-12-4 record in their last 28 games.
"There's a lot of .500 hockey in there, which is frustrating," says Laviolette. "We expect more from ourselves. The [shorthanded] goal [in Sunday's loss], it's just one, but it could have been something different two games ago or three games ago when we lost. But there's something that we're doing - [Sunday] it was a shorthanded goal against, three games ago it was a turnover that comes back and just bites you really quick on something you should have done differently.
"It's a game of mistakes where one or two or three things done differently can change the course of the game and right now we're working just to clean that up a little bit and play a cleaner game. There's not a lot of room for mistakes out there right now, and it's that one extra mistake that's catching us."
Most recently, the Caps dropped a 4-1 decision to the Ottawa Senators on Sunday afternoon at Capital One Arena, marking the sixth time in their last seven home games that they didn't own a scoreboard lead at any point during the game. The Caps yielded an early shorthanded goal to Ottawa's Alex Formenton, the seventh shorty they've surrendered this season, tied for second in the League. When Adam Gaudette scored off the rush late in the first, the Sens had all the offense they would need to win in Washington for the first time in more than eight years.
"I don't think there's much concern," says Caps defenseman John Carlson. "I think there's a lot of areas of improvement, but no one in there is - I don't think - oblivious to what's going on, and where we're coming up short and where we feel like we should be doing better and that sort of thing. We're definitely unhappy and we're trying to work our way through it, but I don't think we're worried or panicked that those are the results that we've been getting."
Of Washington's three wins on home ice in the last two months, only one came in regulation and that was a 5-3 triumph over the Predators at Capital One Arena on Dec. 29. The Caps roared to a 3-0 first period advantage in that game before the Preds struck for three early goals in the second to knot the score. Evgeny Kuznetsov's shorthanded goal with 5:36 remaining in the third restored the Washington lead, and Carl Hagelin's late empty-netter sealed the deal for the Capitals.
That Caps victory over the Preds in the penultimate contest of calendar 2021 halted a seven-game Nashville winning streak, but the Preds started another five-game winning run on New Year's Day. Since they met in Washington late last year, the Preds are 9-5-3. Nashville comes into Tuesday's game on the heels of consecutive regulation losses, at Dallas last Wednesday and against Winnipeg here on Saturday.
With 60 points on the season, Nashville sits in third place in the NHL's Central Division, a single point behind second-place Minnesota. The Preds missed the playoffs last season, ending a run of seven consecutive postseason qualifications, the first five of which came with Laviolette behind the bench, and the sixth of which he was behind the bench for the first half of the season.
