Leafs Roll Past Caps, 5-1
Toronto erupts for four second-period goals in less than 13 minutes to blow past Caps
Since the Caps had a five-game winning streak halted by Ottawa a month ago tonight in Washington, they have not been able to string together consecutive victories, a span that coincides with the loss of defenseman John Carlson to an upper body injury on Dec. 23. Since losing Carlson, the Caps have gone 7-7-2 and their hold on a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference standings has grown more precarious.
"I thought the first period was good," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "The second period, we didn't do the right things defensively and it caught us."
Washington wasn't continually hemmed into its own end in the second, and it wasn't bereft of puck possession, either. But every few minutes or so, it would make a critical mistake and the Leafs would inevitably pounce on it.
"It was a mistake," says Laviolette. "It was [being] out of position. [It was a] wrong assignment. And it caught us. I don't think it was an overwhelming amount of pressure, but at the end of the day, it's about details and the details in the second period were not good enough."
With a 6-2 victory over the Blue Jackets in Columbus on Jan. 5, Washington set a franchise record with its seventh straight road victory. Since then, the Caps have won two of six road games, and they needed to stage a comeback from a three-goal deficit to achieve one of those two triumphs.
Nicklas Backstrom staked the Caps to a 1-0 lead late in the first, scoring his first goal of the season on a Washington power play at 17:17 of the first. Following a smooth entry and a couple of passes, Backstrom called his own number from the inside of the right circle, beating former teammate Ilya Samsonov with a shot to the short side.
The first frame was fairly even at 5-on-5, the but the second period was all Maple Leafs. Toronto got its first power play opportunity in the first minute of the second, and the Leafs evened the game at 1:45 of the middle period when Michael Bunting scored from in tight, putting back the rebound of a John Tavares shot.
Tavares, the Toronto captain, played in his 1,000th career NHL game on Sunday and was honored for the achievement during a pregame ceremony.
Morgan Rielly put Toronto in front for good at the seven-minute mark of the second, scoring his first goal of the season. During a battle for the puck behind the Washington net, the Caps were caught with four players below the goal line. When Bunting was able to win the puck and bump it to the front, Rielly was all alone and was able to chip it to the shelf from the lower inside portion of the left circle to make it 2-1.
Just past the midpoint of the middle period, Toronto began creating some breathing room. After Caps' captain Alex Ovechkin lost his footing and the puck high in the Leafs' end, Toronto went off on a 3-on-1 rush. Just when it appeared as though Caps' defenseman Erik Gustafsson had quelled the uprising by preventing a cross-crease pass, Leafs winger William Nylander reached back for the loose puck and swatted it home on the backhand at 10:45, pushing the lead to 3-1.
At 14:20 of the second, Toronto's Pierre Engvall scored the Leafs' fourth goal of the period - and fourth in a span of 12 minutes and 35 seconds - when he struck from the inside of the left circle. Engvall's goal ended Darcy Kuemper's night; the Caps' starting netminder yielded to Charlie Lindgren at that point of the contest. Kuemper gave up four goals on 20 shots in 34:02 in the Washington nets on Sunday.
Late in the third, Toronto's Zack Aston-Reese closed out the scoring when he beat Lindgren on a short ice breakaway with 3:13 remaining.
The four-goal loss matches Washington's largest losing margin of the season, and it's their second such loss in a span of eight days. The Caps dropped a 6-2 decision to the Golden Knights in Vegas on Jan. 21.
"We're aware that it's a tough building to play in, so those starts in the first period are definitely important," says Washington winger Conor Sheary. "To get up 1-0 going into the second, we felt good about it. For whatever reason, we took a step back in the second and we started feeding their transition and we didn't defend hard enough.
"We weren't making little plays, we were turning it over and it led to their offense. And obviously it was a little too late in the third to come back when they got up 4-1, so it was unfortunate that we stepped back in the second, but we've got to move on."
