The Washington Capitals fell flat in Game 3 against the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday, giving up a 4-0 loss to go down 2-1 in their second-round series. But despite the one-sided final score, the Caps came out with a strong start in the first period and were arguably the better team for large portions of the night before their play devolved in the second and third periods.
After Carolina put up strong offensive numbers in Games 1 and 2, the Capitals seemed to turn the tables in the first period on Saturday. At five-on-five, they outshot the Canes 8-5, out-chanced them 13-11, and held a whopping 8-1 lead in high-danger chances in the first 20 minutes, per Natural Stat Trick. Carolina goaltender Freddie Andersen held firm, however, keeping the score even at zero despite the Capitals’ best efforts.
“We put a lot of pressure on their defenseman, made it really challenging for them to break pucks out, and then they’re out of sorts when they’re coming back in the D-zone,” Nic Dowd said of the team’s start. “I think that’s where we were able to capitalize, but again, it’s about pressure. I think that’s what we did a better job of tonight.”
Head coach Spencer Carbery highlighted the impact those first-period chances could have had on the rest of the game, though he criticized his team’s failure to keep that pace going in the latter parts of the night.
“If you score one of those opportunities early, you get a lead, one, two-nothing, and it changes the whole outlook of the game,” he said postgame, “but we didn’t. So it doesn’t mean you can’t find your way through that at 0-0 into the second period. We just needed to do a little bit better.”
The second two periods proved far less successful for Washington: Carolina held a 19-8 advantage in scoring chances and a 9-4 advantage in high-danger chances at five-on-five, holding the Capitals shotless for minutes at a time.
After praising his players’ performance in the first 30 minutes of the game, Carbery pinpointed Andrei Svechnikov’s 1-0 goal as the turning point where things started to break down.
“I liked our start,” he said postgame. “I thought we were playing well through (the) first period for sure, first half of the second period. Then it starts to get a little bit — we lose momentum there for a stretch, and then they score the face-off goal, which sort of brings the building alive. I thought we were just okay through that, and then once we get down, it’s a tough spot for us as a team. It gets off track and our puck play after that wasn’t great.”
The goal came off an unusual play — after the puck went behind Dowd on a defensive-zone faceoff, Svechnikov raced past John Carlson to pick it up, shooting it into the net just three seconds after play restarted.
“Their goal, what? Was a won faceoff, guy kind of gets a little jump, shoots at the net, goes in,” Dowd said of the goal. “No big deal. It’s just it’s a weird one. That’s a kind of a weird one… Yeah it sucks, but it’s the playoffs. It’s going to happen. Things like that are going to happen.”
Carolina would go up even further after an ill-timed penalty from Alex Alexeyev led to a power-play goal from Jack Roslovic just over six minutes later.
“Yeah, they just got strung a few shifts together,” Trevor van Riemsdyk said of the momentum shift. “You know that’s going to happen and a game like this against a good team. And we were doing good things, and we just slowly got away from it, and that’s part — partially got to tip your cap to them. They put you in tough spots. They’re pressuring you. It’s tough to make plays, but you’ve just got to find a way to make the right ones.”
The Capitals were then left floundering as they tried to come back from a 2-0 deficit. Though they had a league-leading 25 comeback wins during the regular season, just five of those saw them win when behind by multiple goals, and Carbery noted that the team’s design didn’t align with the rapid-fire offense they’d need to recover in those situations.
“Whenever we’re playing from behind, it’s not a good recipe for our group,” he said. “We just don’t have the firepower that can snap it around and [that’s] going to be able to score five, six goals. It’s just not our makeup, so once we start to trail, we start to press, and then you see some uncharacteristic things. We can’t string some plays together and it gets a little sloppy.”
Even if it didn’t lead to a victory, the Capitals saw their strong start as a positive sign, proving they were capable of outplaying the Hurricanes even on the road. If they can sustain that pressure for longer and prevent the sorts of odd goals that put them on the back foot on Saturday, they believe they can tie the series up once again.
“We’ve got a lot of confidence in this room,” Jakob Chychrun said. “I think we had a really good start and I think we can put together a full 60 here in this barn and make it really hard on them. I think there were times where we made them uncomfortable and (if) we find the back of the net there. I think we open the floodgates and are able to find a few extra goals.
“I think once we get one here, we’re going to be rolling and, (I have) all the confidence in the world for next game. I have no doubt about this group.”
At this point, the Capitals are plenty familiar with the Hurricanes’ style of play and how to beat it, while their start on Saturday shows they’re capable of executing a counterstrategy for at least part of a game. Now, the question is whether they can do so well enough to pull out a win.
“I don’t think (our response) has to be anything too crazy,” van Riemsdyk said. “I think we played a pretty good game, pretty solid game. I thought we had some decent looks. Obviously, they were opportunistic and made some nice plays and played well in the second half of that game. But I don’t think a lot has to change. We know what we have to do to be successful and we’ve got to do those things.”
