Caps Start Weeklong Trip in Tempe
Caps take on Coyotes on Thursday night in first ever visit to Mullett Arena
The Caps take to the road for their first multi-game journey in more than a month, heading west for a three-game trip that starts on Thursday night in Tempe against the Arizona Coyotes. The game marks Washington's first-ever visit to Mullett Arena, the Coyotes' third different home since they moved south from Winnipeg in 1996-97.
Between now and the All-Star break/bye week at the end of January, the Caps will play six of their next seven games on the road; they'll play just once in Washington in a span of 25 days. The Caps can go into this road heavy stretch feeling relatively good about their overall team game, and they should be feeling especially confident about their road game. They enter Thursday's game with eight wins in their last nine on the road.
Coming off a 4-2 loss to the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday in the District, the Caps have now dropped three of their last four games overall - all in regulation - and they've followed up an 11-2-2 month of December with a decidedly more ordinary 3-4-1 mark since the flip of the calendar.
The Caps had a pair of one-goal leads on Tuesday against the Wild, but they fell behind for good when Minnesota struck for three goals in the second period. The Washington power play unit had a pair of opportunities to tie Tuesday's game in the third period, but it wasn't able to connect despite a few good looks.
"Obviously it's an opportunity where the power play - or 5-on-5 - gets a chance to tie the game, so those are big moments in the game," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "I think that like everything through the course of the long season, it goes through peaks and valleys, and times when it's clicking and rolling and times when it's not. We'll continue to work at it, and we know we've got the right guys out there."
Many of the underlying results have been positive for Washington in the five games since the return of Nicklas Backstrom and Tom Wilson. Although the Caps are 2-3-0 in those games, they've started to control possession, territory and pace in their last three. Their emphasis for the upcoming trip has to be in playing that same brand of hockey consistently and expecting better results.
"There's a lot that we did good for 60 minutes," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette in the wake of Tuesday's loss. "It's one of those games where I can't fault the process and I can't fault the effort. I thought that the chances that we had, and the possession time - we had the heavy weight of the [offensive] zone time and the looks. And [we had] pucks rolling across the crease, and we deflected ours and they go wide, they deflected theirs and they go in. It's just the way the game went, the way it went [Tuesday]."
All three Minnesota goals came from defensemen - two of them from Jared Spurgeon - and all three came with heavy screens in front. Around this time last month, it was the Caps that were getting a bounty of goals from their blueline and from point shots. Washington has been victimized by a number of goals on point shots in its last two games, so it's on the other side of the peaks and valleys in that department, too.
"I have to look at it objectively, as to whether I thought our guys showed up and played hard and did the right things," says Laviolette. "Defensively, I thought we were pretty good. The goals were the goals."
Now the Caps will try to get the trip off to a strong start against Arizona, which has always seemed to play Washington tough over the years, regardless of whatever seasonal forces are at play for either side. The Caps won both games last season, but each was a 2-0 victory achieved with the benefit of an empty-net insurance goal late.
Since Alex Ovechkin scored "The Goal" in Glendale, 17 years ago this week on Jan. 16, 2006, the Caps are 3-5-2 in their last 10 road games against the Coyotes.
The Coyotes are sitting in seventh place in the NHL's Central Division. When last the Capitals saw them on Nov. 5 in Washington, the Yotes were starting a grueling stretch of 14 straight road games. Although they won each of the first three games of that tour - starting with a 3-2 win over the Caps that night - the Coyotes finished the trip at 4-8-3.
Soon after returning from that long stretch and settling in here in Tempe, the Coyotes put together another three-game winning streak wrapped around the NHL's holiday break. But a nine-game losing streak - all in regulation - followed. Arizona ended that losing run in its most recent game, a 4-3 shootout win over Detroit here on Tuesday.
The Caps' visit to Tempe ends a quick two-game homestand for the Coyotes, who will duck out to Dallas for a Saturday night date with the Stars before coming right back home for their next three.
