One
The first game following the three-day holiday break is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're going to get.
"The good part about it is everybody is in the same boat," head coach Rod Brind'Amour said this morning.
And that much is true, at least mostly, but it is a little different for the away team. Brind'Amour's quote came from Raleigh, where the Canes held their morning skate before taking a quick flight to Washington, even quicker than the drive into the city. There, the team spent a few short hours in a hotel in the hopes of catching a little shut eye.
It's anything but the usual gameday routine, even if the basic shell of it still exists. What results at puck drop, then, is a question mark.
"A lot of times you feel like you have a piano on your back," Brind'Amour said this morning, noting it was tough to get everything - the hands, the legs, the pace - back in sync.
That's exactly what it appeared to be for the Canes and arguably for the Capitals, at times, as well.
"It was pretty obvious both teams were kind of meh, just feeling our way through it after a little break," Justin Williams said. "You could certainly see that."
"They had the same break," Brind'Amour said after the game. "I think we just weren't ready to go like we needed to be. That's on me. I saw it and talked about it, but I should have done something different. I don't know what, but we were not ready to go like we needed to be against that team at this time of the year."
Two
A trio of power plays couldn't jump start the Canes in the first period, as the team managed three shots on goal on six minutes worth of time on the man advantage.
"Work. Work was missing," Aho said. "We didn't work hard enough."
"Our entries were terrible. It's been bad all year," Brind'Amour said. "It's frustrating. We work on it a lot. Our best players need to be our best players at that time, and they just let off the gas. It's inexcusable. That's the difference in the game."
Whiffing on three power-play opportunities in the first period is an unforgiving statistic that's hard to overcome. As expected, Washington got its looks on the power play in the second period - three, to be exact - and while the Canes did a bang-up job killing the first two, the Caps were able to stretch their lead on the third, as T.J. Oshie redirected John Carlson's wrist shot from the point.
"At the end of the day, you can look at the box score sometimes and tell the story of the game. Not always, but a lot of times you can. They scored a power-play goal, and we didn't," Williams said.
Three
A self-inflicted wound put the Canes down 1-0 early in the second period. Janne Kuokkanen gained possession of the puck in the slot and laid it off for Calvin de Haan, who was handcuffed and immediately double-teamed. A wide-open Chandler Stephenson then had time and space to set up shop and fire away.
"I don't think we were ready enough to play in the first and second," Aho said.
"It was frustrating to watch us just go through the motions, really, for two periods," Brind'Amour said.
Four
A slow start from the Canes was mitigated by Petr Mrazek's strong play in net. He made a number of key saves early when the Caps were bringing pressure, especially on an early power play for the home club, to give his team a chance to find its footing.
