Caps Tangle with Tampa Bay
Caps finish homestand on Wednesday against Lightning
Washington concludes a four-game homestand on Wednesday night when it hosts the Tampa Bay Lightning at Capital One Arena. The game is the first meeting between the two former Southeast Division rivals since Nov. 1, and it will conclude the 2021-22 season's series between them.
Wednesday's game features a pair of teams coming off bad beats on home ice. The Caps fell 5-1 to Minnesota here on Sunday, and the Lightning took a 6-2 trouncing from Toronto a night later in Tampa.
Since starting the season 9-1-4 in their first 14 home games, the Caps have won just seven of 22 in the District since (7-14-1), and they've dropped four of their last five games at Capital One Arena while surrendering five or more goals against in all four of those setbacks. They've also scored just one goal in each of their last two home games.
"I'm sure it happens to everybody through the course of the year, where you have a stretch where you're really not happy with the way you've played," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "And so we've got two games that are five days apart, and we don't like them. We don't like the Carolina game [a 6-1 loss on March 28], and we don't like the game [Sunday] night against Minnesota. And so you try to fix it."
Washington's ongoing home ice woes are made all the more perplexing by its 21-7-5 road record this season, the best in the NHL (.712 points percentage). The Caps are 14-4-3 on the road (.738) since the beginning of December.
In Sunday's 5-1 loss to Minnesota, the Wild scored on each of its first two shots on net, taking a 2-0 lead at 1:37 of the first period and already having all the offense it would need to win. The Caps limited the visitors defensively for the rest of the night, but they found themselves unsuccessfully chasing the game once again. Washington played into the visitors' hands by overpassing and looking for pretty plays rather than focusing on getting pucks and traffic to the net.
"If you look at our chances, we just played too much [on the] perimeter," said Caps' captain Alex Ovechkin afterwards. "We had a couple of days ago meetings to show all our shots. If you compare different teams, we have to go to the net, we have to have traffic, and we understand what it's going to take, especially in the playoffs. Playoffs is going to be a different game, it's going to be a hard game, and we just have to go there and fight through it and find the dirty ones."
With 13 games remaining in the regular season, the Caps don't have much in the way of upward mobility in the Eastern Conference chase for playoff seeding. And they still hold an 11-point lead over the New York Islanders for the second wild card playoff berth, though the Isles hold a game in hand and the two teams have two games remaining against one another later in the month.
For the Caps, the final 13 games are about getting their overall team game playoff ready, to play to their identity, and to figure out what the optimal makeup of their forward group should look like when the playoffs get underway less than a month from now. Washington needs to achieve these multiple objectives while collecting enough wins and standings points to keep the Isles at a distance from them in the standings.
"Anytime you're in a rut like this - and this is in my opinion - and guys aren't playing our brand of hockey, and we're not playing to our identity," begins Caps winger T.J. Oshie, "I don't think any amount of coaching would get you out of that. That comes down to the guys on the ice, the players playing a certain way and being prepared a certain way.
"So we've been talking as a group - as players - and just getting some thoughts out there on what things need to change. I think we've got a pretty good handle on it, and our next two games, there's probably no one else I'd rather play to get us going again."
After finishing the homestand against the Lightning on Wednesday, the Caps face the Penguins in Pittsburgh on Saturday afternoon.
Tampa Bay's Monday night beating at the hands of the Maple Leafs dropped the Lightning below the Bruins in the Atlantic Division standings and into the first wild card slot in the Eastern Conference. It was only the seventh regulation loss in 33 home games for the Bolts this season; only three teams have had fewer such defeats.
The Lightning is also tied for the NHL lead with 22 road wins in '21-22, but it has lost four of its last nine (4-5-0) away from home. In its previous visit to D.C. this season, Tampa Bay took a 2-1 overtime decision from the Caps on Oct. 16 with Steven Stamkos supplying the game-winner.
Seeking to become the first NHL team in four decades to win three straight Stanley Cup titles, the Lightning has yet to suffer more than three successive losses this season. Late last week, the Bolts owned a four-game winning streak, but an overtime loss to the Habs at home on Saturday combined with Monday's loss to the Leafs has the Lightning seeking to avoid a third straight loss on Wednesday in Washington.
