Caps Lose a Heartbreaker to Pens, 4-3

With a furious third-period rally, the Caps climbed their way back into what was essentially a must-win game for them against the Penguins in Pittsburgh on Saturday night. Down 3-0 early in the third, they chipped their way back into the contest and pulled even with the Pens with three goals in just under 12 minutes.

But the Caps' exhilaration was quickly followed by despair.
Just 84 seconds after the Caps pulled even with the Pens, Pittsburgh's Evgeni Malkin stripped Caps' winger Anthony Mantha of the puck just outside the Washington line, then carried into the slot and fired a shot to the far side behind Darcy Kuemper with just 1:20 remaining in the game. Malkin's goal stood up as the game-winner in a 4-3 Pittsburgh victory, putting a serious damper on Washington's fading playoff hopes.
The Caps leave Pittsburgh six points behind the Penguins for the second wild card berth in the Eastern Conference, and with the Pens holding a game in hand on them. Washington is down to eight games remaining, and they would need to win all eight to reach 92 points.
"It's a tough one," says Caps' winger T.J. Oshie. "I don't think that last play was the only thing that lost the game for us. I know [Mantha] feels terrible about it, but we trust him with the puck and it just wasn't a good enough 60 minutes against a good hockey team over there. The odds were stacked against us a little bit tonight, and we weren't able to find our game until maybe a little bit too late."
The two teams played a scoreless first half of the game before the Pens broke out to score three goals in a span of less than 10 minutes of playing time, two in the back half of the middle period and another in the first minute of the third. The disappointing part of that sequence for the Capitals is twin-pronged; all three Pittsburgh goals came on odd-man opportunities, and the Caps had three odd-man chances of their own in the second, but they couldn't finish any of them.
Pens goalie Casey DeSmith stopped Dylan Strome on a 2-on-1 rush just ahead of the five-minute mark of the second, and DeSmith denied John Carlson on another 2-on-1 about four minutes later. In the waning minutes of the period, DeSmith used his right pad to thwart Alex Ovechkin's breakaway bid.
Instead of being up by a goal or two midway through the game, the Caps fell down by a goal when Ryan Poehling tore off on a breakaway and beat Kuemper high to the glove side at 10:10 of the second, giving the Pens a 1-0 lead.
Just over two minutes later, Pens' winger Mikael Granlund made a nifty indirect feed high in Pittsburgh ice to spring Jason Zucker on a 2-on-1 with defenseman Chad Ruhwedel. Zucker headmanned it to Ruhwedel in neutral ice, and Ruhwedel did the rest, scoring his first goal of the season - and first since April 22 of last year - to make it a 2-0 game at 12:17.
Shorthanded at the end of the second, the Caps put three more shots on DeSmith in the final five seconds of the middle frame, but again couldn't solve him.
"A couple of them we'd like to have back," says Oshie of the Caps' second-period opportunities. "We kind of shot it back at [DeSmith], even though the net was empty. We just didn't capitalize on our opportunities and they did."
Pittsburgh opened the third with 52 seconds of power play time on a carryover penalty, and it extended its lead to 3-0 when Jake Guentzel scored on a breakaway at the 27-second mark of the third.
Undermanned and shorthanded personnel-wise for the entire season, the Caps dug in and did what they've been doing all season, trying to battle back.
Evgeny Kuznetsov made a sublime play to set up Tom Wilson at 5:16 of the third to put the Caps on the board, taking advantage of a Kris Letang turnover while the two teams were playing 4-on-4 hockey.
Four seconds after Washington went on a power play in the back half of the third, Carlson teed up Ovechkin and the Caps' captain drilled a one-timer from his left dot office, firing it through DeSmith to make it a 3-2 game with 6:42 remaining.
Washington turned up the heat, and almost exactly four minutes after the Ovechkin goal, Strome backhanded a shot home from the bottom of the left circle, burying a rebound of his own shot from the other side of the ice seconds earlier. The Strome goal gave the Caps new life with 2:44 left, but that new life proved to be fleeting.
Malkin's goal was the dagger in the game, and it may also prove to be the same for Washington's season.
"It's tough," says Wilson. "It's a hard-fought game, and it would have been nice to have it. But stuff happens, and there's nothing else to say."
"I think the guys are probably all frustrated," says Caps' coach Peter Laviolette. "They were opportunistic on some of the chances they had and got themselves a lead. I thought the guys played hard.
"They scored a few in the second period, but I thought that was maybe our best period. We were just trying to generate; we had a lot of chances. They were able to capitalize, and we weren't able to capitalize, and we found ourselves down 2-0.
"The game spins quick out there. Things turn around and they come back at you really quick. I thought we did a great job of just staying focused and getting back into that game. It's frustrating to tie it up and have it go back the other way."