From the time the Caps landed in Detroit in the wee hours of Sunday morning, the greater Motown region was cast in an unrelenting gray tint with nearly constant rain coming down. It was like that when what passed for daylight arrived, and it was like that in the late afternoon when the puck dropped for Sunday’s 5 p.m. start between the Caps and the Red Wings at Little Caesars Arena.
Unfortunately for the Caps, they played like the weather in the game’s first 20 minutes, falling into a deep first-period hole that was too cavernous to dig out of, and suffering just their 10th regulation defeat in 36 games, a 4-2 defeat in Detroit.
Alex DeBrincat had a pair of goals and Caps killer Patrick Kane had a goal and also set up DeBrincat for what proved to be the game-winner for the Wings. With the assist on DeBrincat’s second goal, Kane joined Mike Modano as just the second U.S.-born player in League history to reach the 1,300-point plateau.
“The first period, we just shoot ourselves in the foot,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “We don’t give ourselves a chance because we make some mental mistakes and mistakes with the puck, some missed reads, and we put them on the power play, things like that.”
Detroit struck for four goals in the first period in a span of 11 minutes. DeBrincat tipped home blueliner Ben Chiarot’s point shot through traffic at 3:19. Kane doubled the lead on a power play goal from the right dot at 6:44, extending his point streak against Washington to 11 games (7-12-19, dating back to Jan. 20, 2019), his longest against any opponent.
After the Caps killed a penalty, goalie Charlie Lindgren kept the deficit at two when he denied Marco Kasper’s breakaway bid just after the midpoint of the frame.
Caps captain Alex Ovechkin scored his second goal in as many nights mere seconds after the Lindgren save, making it a 2-1 contest with career goal No. 870. It’s the 59th time in Ovechkin’s career that he has scored goals on consecutive days.
But Detroit wasn’t done; they responded with another DeBrincat goal – off a sublime play from Kane – just 31 seconds after the Ovechkin goal.
“We made a bunch of mistakes in that period,” says Carbery. “But that shift after the [Ovechkin] goal was a massive shift. And to give one back right there, once we settled things down [hurt]. We weren’t sharp, we made some mistakes. It’s 2-0; okay, it’s 2-1. All right, deep breath. Let’s just get a few even shifts under our belt. And we throw a puck away in the offensive zone, [the Wings] transition, next thing you know it’s in the back of our net.
“I thought that was a big, big – not the defining play – but a huge play in that hockey game.”
Lucas Raymond scored Detroit’s fourth goal of the frame at 14:18. The Wings took a 4-1 lead to the second intermission, and they opened the middle period with a full two-minute power play.
After killing off that Detroit man advantage, the Caps played a better second period. They were in the Wings’ end of the ice more, and they threatened a bit more offensively. A too many men on the ice call interrupted Washington’s attempt to climb back into the contest for a couple of minutes, but in the back half of the second, the Caps mounted more offensive zone heat, but without the execution to match it.
In a span of just over two minutes, the Capitals missed the net five times in the latter half of the second period. That stretch included a Connor McMichael breakaway in which he skated past the post before missing from below the goal line, as well as a couple of other threatening chances that could have helped Washington to rebound.
“Even in the second period, we had a couple of good looks,” says McMichael. “I had a breakaway that I’ve got to capitalize on, and who knows if I put that one in, how the game could turn out. It’s little things like that that could change a hockey game, and tonight it didn’t go our way.”
The shots the Caps were able to put on Red Wings goaltender Alex Lyon produced few second chance or rebound opportunities; he was exemplary at steering pucks to the corners or out of harm’s way in some other fashion.
“If you talk to any goalie in the League,” begins Caps center Nic Dowd, “they're going to feel good about their game if they're stopping that first shot, or they're putting it up into the [protective] webbing, or they're putting it into a good area, as opposed to making them try to track pucks through traffic, make multiple saves, and feeling like maybe they're scrambling.
“Early, we didn't do a good job of doing that. But in the second and third, I thought we did do a good job of making him make some tough saves. I think it'd be a little bit more challenging for him if we had a little bit more traffic.”
To their credit, the Caps kept hammering away in the third, trying to chip away at the deficit. Midway through the third, they were able to cut it to 4-2 when Dowd reached the double-digit goal plateau for the fifth straight season, fighting off Detroit defenders to be able to chip a lunging backhander behind Lyon from the top of the paint with 9:27 left.
But that was as close as the Caps could get. A late power play gave them a 6-on-4 opportunity with Lindgren off in favor of an extra attacker, but their bid to sweep a fifth set of back-to-backs in nine tries fell short.
Sunday’s win was Todd McLellan’s first as Detroit’s coach; he took over from Derek Lalonde on Dec. 26, and the Caps knew they’d be facing a motivated Motor City team on short rest.
“I don’t think it was anything structurally,” says Carbery, “but you knew they were going to be ready to play, and our guys knew that. We just made too many mental and physical mistakes to survive that first period.”
