While we dug out from the snow, the Washington Capitals were in upstate New York, visiting the Buffalo Sabres on Monday night. It was an ugly outing, so maybe merely making overtime was a little victory.
Known Caps killer JJ Peterka (no relationka) scored first, a snapshot through traffic after a hectic entry. Tom Wilson got his first of the night on the power play, a rush goal set up by Chychrun.
In the second, Alex Tuch stripped the aforementioned Chychrun to score a solo breakaway goal. Tom Wilson tied it up with his second of the game, snatching Protas’ rebound, but the Sabres restored their lead with a monster power-play goal by Tage Thompson.
Birthday boy Aliaksei Protas tied the game in the third period with a net-front goal on a scrappy shift. From there we went to overtime, which could have gone either way. Instead it went neither. Biscuit time, shootout bullets:
- Thompson did not put the biscuit in the basket.
- Dubois put the biscuit in the basket!
- Quinn did not put the biscuit in the basket.
- Strome did not put the biscuit in the basket.
- Tuch put the biscuit in the basket.
- Carlson did not put the biscuit in the basket.
- Peterka put the biscuit in the basket.
- Chychrun did not put the biscuit in the basket.
Caps lose in the shootout.
- JJ Peterka has five goals in eight career games against the Capitals. He’s been a point-per-game player for almost a month. Trade that man out west immediately. Like to San Jose. Hawaii. Midway.
- It was another iffy night in Washington’s zone, with missed passes and failed exits galore. The third line (Vrana, McMichael, and Eller) did well – especially Vrana, who needed a good game – but they also had favorable deployments.
- Those favorable deployments came at the expense of Nic Dowd‘s fourth line, who got thrown to the wolves and then eaten alive, to mix metaphors that mix well. I think I saw them take an offensive-zone faceoff once.
- Journalists at the The Athletic, some of whom I consider pals, are trying to join the Times Guild, the union for mainline NYT writers. Good for them, long overdue. A lot of The Athletic’s business plan early on was exploiting a weak labor situation for regional sportswriters, especially those at dying newspapers, killed by Big Tech and private equity. Finally, those workers are organizing.
- Back to the ice, Dylan Strome had a rough night. He tried to fight Peyton Krebs after a clean hit on John Carlson, committed the only penalty in the mess, and had to watch the Caps go down a goal from the box. Then in the third he got busted boarding Henri Jokiharju.
- Tage Thompson did an Ovi. My mom even texted me about it. They clocked this shot at 103 mph.
- Tom Wilson. I just wanna start the bullet with his name. Thomas Wilson. One of the most improved players this season – not just in DC: anywhere, he’s at 18 goals before the halfway point. He had two on Monday. Basically, he was the Caps offense.
- Joining Wilson at 18 goals is Aliaksei Protas, who turned 24 today in addition to forcing overtime. Big bois, big goals.
- We are not big round-number milestone people here at RMNB. Nicolas Aube-Kubel hit 300 games. John Carlson hit 700 points. I’m not even bolding their names; that’s how edgy I am.
- The game got better as it went on. The third period was decent. Pierre-Luc Dubois’ line got cooking. Charlie Lindgren was clutch in overtime. Two things to build on there.
- The Sabres’ black jerseys look bad to me. Is that how other teams’ fans feel when they see the Caps in the black Screagle unis?
- Shootouts aren’t the same without Kuzy.
Unimpressive outing from the Caps, who are struggling in all three zones. The games are getting tighter, uglier, choppier. This I think is a challenge to Spencer Carbery. He needs to enforce structure better, and he needs to keep fiddling with the defensive pairs until he finds complementary skillsets (i.e. Can either guy on the pairing make a clean breakout pass? If not, then don’t pair them.)
Until things improve, the Caps won’t be able to string two wins in a row – a feat they have not accomplished since before Christmas.
