Live by the double minor, die by the double minor. The Caps have been on the right side of a four-minute power play twice in the last week, but they were on the wrong side on Tuesday in their only home game in a span of two weeks, dropping a 2-1 overtime decision to the San Jose Sharks at Capital One Arena.
But double minor aside, the Caps simply didn’t play well enough to win on Tuesday, and it might be the first night in 25 games this season that statement would apply to them.
“I don’t know what to say, really,” says Caps’ defenseman Rasmus Sandin. “It just felt like it was a complete off game, which is not acceptable. We need to come out better and create some energy on our bench and that type of stuff to get going a little bit quicker in this game.”
Twice in a span of three games last week, the Caps benefited from a double minor penalty called against the opposition. Last Wednesday in Tampa, they won 5-4 when Tom Wilson scored on the ensuing power play after the Lightning’s Anthony Cirelli did some dental work on Dylan Strome with his stick.
Three nights later in Newark, Strome took Dawson Mercer’s stick to the grill, and the Caps scored on both ends of that double minor to turn the game in their favor and eventually win it.
Briefly back home to host San Jose on Tuesday, the Caps played perhaps their weakest overall game of the season, though they were still locked in a 1-1 tie with the Sharks as time ticked down in the third period. But Wilson’s attempted stick lift in the defensive zone went awry; he caught Sharks rookie Macklin Celebrini up high with 2:17 left, putting San Jose on a four-minute power play.
The Caps scraped a point out of the game by killing the front half of the penalty plus 17 seconds, but they couldn’t snuff out the remainder of 4-on-3 overtime power play. William Eklund won it for San Jose at the 39-second mark of overtime, giving the Sharks their fourth win in their last five games and a two-win start to a six-game road trip.
“They were just zipping it around and they beat me going to the left,” says Caps’ goalie Logan Thompson of the game-winner. “And it snuck through, and I think it’s a save I can make. And it's unfortunate. We were there all game, and I think we let two points slip away tonight. It's frustrating.”
As for the Capitals, their home struggles continued. Their four-game winning streak was halted, and they have now won just one of their last six games (1-3-2) at Capital One Arena.
“It was not good again, especially the second and third period,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “It’s really, really disappointing. Because it was from all four lines and all of our [defense] pairs, and it was a struggle. And it’s now becoming an issue at home right now.”
Washington’s start wasn’t bad; the Caps were around the net, they had scoring chances, and they had offensive zone time in the game’s first 20 minutes. But many of their best looks missed the mark, and when Tyler Toffoli picked off a Sandin pass at the Washington line late in the first, he then used the Washington blueliner as a decoy, firing a high shot past Thompson with exactly a minute remaining in the first.
In the second, the Caps regressed. At one point, the five Washington skaters were hemmed in their own end for almost two and a half minutes before they were able to get a partial change. But the Caps survived, and they even managed to draw even soon after, striking five seconds after an offensive zone face-off win.
Nic Dowd won the right dot draw, and Ivan Miroshnichenko kicked it back – literally – to Martin Fehervary while Dowd drifted across to the weak side. Fehervary fed Dowd, and the latter’s one-timer found twine, the only one of Washington’s 28 shots to do so, at 13:02 of the second.
But this would be a night of diminishing returns for Washington. It was better in the first than it was in the second, and better in the second than in the third. The Capitals’ total of shots on net was halved in every period – 16 in the first, eight in the second, and four in the third.
“Our puck play was obviously horrendous,” says Carbery, “so we couldn't string together passes. You saw the execution. That's fine; you're going to have off nights where you can’t keep a puck flat, it's bouncing everywhere, you can't execute. Or when you do get into situations where you feel like something's going, you miss the net or it hits shin pads, or whatever it might be. You saw that 100 times tonight.”
It took 25 games, but the Caps finally turned in a clunker on Tuesday.
“I think we got away from everything that we’ve been doing this whole season,” says Caps’ forward Connor McMichael. “We just weren’t smart with the puck. We weren’t making easy plays, and we were trying to do too much. That’s one we want to put behind us.”
The Sharks have engineered an impressive turnaround after a dismal 0-7-2 start to the season, they’ve gone 10-6-3 since. And on Tuesday, they made a winner of their coach against his mentor, Carbery. San Jose coach Ryan Warsofsky was Carbery’s assistant coach during his days with the ECHL South Carolina Stingrays a decade ago.
“It wasn’t about ‘us’ at all,” says Warsofsky. “We’re both ultra-competitive, and I think it was a good hockey game, if you were a fan. Both of us will look at the film and have some things to work on. But obviously it feels good to win.”
