In the early minutes of Tuesday’s game between the Caps and the Toronto Maple Leafs at Capital One Arena, it appeared as though the Capitals were on the verge of rewriting the script of their season to date. Alas, it was but a mirage.
Following a successful coach’s challenge by the Leafs, the game unfolded similarly to the Caps’ previous body of work this season, and at night’s end Washington was on the wrong end of a 4-1 score.
Joseph Woll stopped 36 of 37 shots in the Toronto nets, and the Leafs erupted for three goals in the second to put the Caps in a hole from which they weren’t able to extricate themselves. Caps’ captain Alex Ovechkin scored the lone Washington goal, the 300th power-play goal of his career.
Again, there was progress in the “process” that Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery speaks of frequently; Washington outplayed the high octane Leafs for stretches of the game, and the Caps outshot Toronto by 37-17 on the night. But some of the same old bugs also bit the Caps on this night. They fell down by multiple goals for the fifth time in as many games, they made critical defensive mistakes, and the opposition’s power play scored for the fifth time in as many games.
“A lot of good things again, but same old story,” says Carbery. “We’re on repeat coming in here after games. You can do a lot of good things, but if you make a few critical mistakes like we’ve talked about numerous times, and then obviously you’ve got to give them a lot of credit; they’ve got a good team.”
Early in the first, the Caps had an opportunity to do a couple of things they hadn’t done in any of the season’s first four games, namely, to score on the power play and play with a lead. When Nick Jensen drew a hooking call on Toronto’s David Kampf at 2:24 of the first, the Caps were presented with an opportunity to do both.
During its first power play of the game, Washington poured six shots on Woll, including two from Ovechkin. The sixth of those shots – a Nicklas Backstrom follow up from in tight – found the back of the net with 10 seconds left on the man advantage. Finally, the Caps appeared to have a power-play goal and a lead.
But just before Backstrom scored, Ovechkin leaped into to crease area in an effort to pounce on the same rebound Backstrom buried.
Toronto called its timeout to take a longer look at the replay, and Leafs’ bench boss Sheldon Keefe opted to challenge the call, alleging that Ovechkin interfered with Woll on the play. Sure enough, the long arm of the law concurred, and the Backstrom goal was overturned.
“I thought it was going to stand, to be honest with you,” says Carbery. “I looked at it a bunch, and we as a staff and our video coaches had a pretty good bead on it. It didn’t look like [Ovechkin] really impacted Woll’s ability to make the save.”
The score remained 0-0 until the Leafs went on their second power play of the period, just after the midpoint of the frame.
With just four seconds remaining on that Toronto man advantage, Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly scored from the right circle, his shot deflecting in off the stick blade of Washington defenseman Martin Fehervary to make it a 1-0 game at 12:53.
On the plus side, the Caps played a strong first period. They limited the Leafs to just two shots on net at even strength and had four high danger chances to none for Toronto, according to naturalstattrick.com.
Washington couldn’t convert on a carryover power play that bridged the first two periods, but they had a chance to pull even when Ovechkin was awarded a penalty shot when Toronto’s Mark Giordano hooked him on a breakaway.
Ovechkin made a move and tried to beat Woll with a backhander, but the Leafs’ goalie turned it aside.
“I tried to make a move, and he saved it,” says Ovechkin.
Less than three minutes after Ovechkin’s penalty shot, the Leafs doubled their lead on a John Tavares deflection of a Rielly point shot at 5:41. Less than a minute after that, William Nylander got loose near the Washington line, got around Jensen and into a 1-on-1 situation with Caps’ goalie Darcy Kuemper, and the Leafs’ forward neatly tucked a shot under the bar to make it 3-0. Against a Caps team that has yet to score more than two goals in a game this season, that would be more than enough.
Later in the frame, Auston Matthews notched his seventh goal of the season – the same total the Caps have managed as a team to date – on a Toronto power play. Matthews’ goal made it 4-0 at 15:07.
In the final seconds of the middle period, Ovechkin, who had 14 shots on night in the game – one shy of his single-game best – notched the team’s first power-play goal of the season, becoming the first player in League history to score 300 goals with the man advantage. Ovechkin also scored on Woll for the first time, making the Toronto goaltender the 170th unique goaltending victim of his 19-year NHL career.
“Obviously, he has a great shot,” says Woll. “There’s a reason he has scored so many goals. He’s a dangerous player, especially on the power play.”
The Caps won’t have to wait long to get back in action. They’re off to New Jersey for a Wednesday night date with the Devils in the back half of their first set of back-to-backs this season, and another chance to rewrite what has been a vexing early season script.
Tuesday’s loss was the Caps’ third straight (0-2-1) and fourth in five games (1-3-1).
“It’s the same old story,” laments Carbery. “We’re finding ways to lose hockey games. And in the National Hockey League, you can do all the good things you want. Structurally, there are a lot of good things going on, no question. But at the end of the day, if you want to be a good team in this League, you’ve got to find ways to win, as opposed to finding ways to lose.”
