The Washington Capitals led against the Colorado Avalanche after one period on Thursday night. Unfortunately, hockey games are three periods long, and they’ve seemingly forgotten that for the last month-plus.
I can’t say the vibes are great after watching the Capitals’ first game without Alex Ovechkin, but it’s also just one game.
- There’s been a hot-shooting mirage hiding the Capitals’ very poor play in the back half of games over the last month. With Alex Ovechkin out, those issues may be brought to the forefront more often. It was pretty discouraging to see the Caps not even make a real push once they went down a goal until the final minutes when they pulled Logan Thompson. Colorado recorded 1o five-on-five high-danger chances in the last 40 minutes and Washington managed just four, two in each period. I have faith Spencer Carbery will figure this out. The team isn’t dominant in first periods by accident.
- Despite all of that, the Capitals still had all the chances in the world to win this game. The team just had no finish for really the first time all season. Pierre-Luc Dubois could have had a hat trick, Connor McMichael had two breakaways and hit the post, Taylor Raddysh had a point-blank shot, and Tom Wilson and Andrew Mangiapane were all around the net. McMichael created 1.44 expected goals by himself but could not solve Alexandar Georgiev.
- Dubois did finally break through for a much deserved goal, his second with the Capitals. Overall, though, as Carbery pointed out postgame, his usually tremendous line with McMichael and Wilson got eaten alive a bit by Nathan MacKinnon and company. With Dubois on the ice five-on-five, the Capitals held negative differentials in shot attempts (-10) and scoring chances (-7).
- Hendrix Lapierre got back into the lineup as a winger and skated 9:33 of ice time in the loss. I am not a fan of the whole wing experiment here. I don’t think this year’s Capitals team is the right environment for him to be learning in the NHL on the fly. This year’s Capitals’ team has higher expectations and isn’t like the poorer, less high-pressure teams of recent years, where guys like McMichael and Aliaksei Protas could skate by not producing in an unnatural position because the entire team wasn’t producing. I’d like to see Ivan Miroshnichenko on Saturday.
- Speaking of not producing, the Capitals got nada from their new first-line trio. I think there were some clear chemistry issues which are to be expected. However, Carbery did split them up toward the end of the game, playing Dylan Strome with Wilson and McMichael for 1:19 at five-on-five. If you think about it, now may be the perfect time for him to try some new combos.
- Logan Thompson was spectacular yet again. He made 25 stops on 27 shots and took his first regulation loss of the season. Per MoneyPuck, he stopped another .63 goals above expected.
