The Washington Capitals lost their final home game of the season, letting the Columbus Blue Jackets sweep the home-and-home weekend series.
After sitting out Saturday’s shutout defeat, Alex Ovechkin said absolutely not and scored 70 seconds after the first puck drop. Zach Werenski tied the game from afar and through traffic, making it 1-1 after one period.
Adam Fantilli caught a bad turnover from Tom Wilson to give the Jackets the lead in the second period, then he extended the lead early in the third. With four minutes left, Dylan Strome handed the puck to Dmitri Voronkov to make it 4-1.
Caps lose.
- The Capitals will not win the President’s Trophy. The Blue Jackets are still alive.
- Columbus’ postseason hopes were on the line in this one. They needed a win to keep Montreal from securing the final playoff seed. They were desperate, and yet still Washington decisively controlled the flow of play. So the Blue Jackets should feel great about the game ended but bad about how it went, and perhaps (I think) the Caps should feel the exact opposite. More on that in a moment.
- I am curious what Alex Ovechkin thought of Saturday’s loss. He exploded out of the gates on Sunday and looked great with the extra day’s rest. Dylan Strome hooked him up for a sneaky, twisty goal to become Washington’s first and only goal of the weekend.
- That one added Columbus goalie Jet Greaves to The List. Greaves was lights-out on Saturday, and that one Ovi goal aside he was again on Sunday. He was great, and I wonder if Elvis Merzlikins has been practically shut down for the season. Putting a green goalie in a back-to-back is pretty bold.
- Tempers flared after that opening goal, so Dylan McIlrath fought Mathieu Olivier for endless minutes. They seem like tough guys – Olivier had to ice his knuckles from the penalty box. But I bet I could do an NHL fight. This is not like when a guy thinks he could return a Serena Williams serve. I can’t do that. But I think I could get punched in the helmet by a guy whose feet don’t have traction with the ground.
- I mean this. I’m not just baiting you into the comments. I’m totally sincere about this bit opinion – I mean: opinion.
- Adam Fantilli tormented the Caps this weekend. He wrecked Ryan Leonard and scored two on Saturday; he scored two more on Sunday – including a real goof-up from Tom Wilson, who has not had a good week defensively.
- John Carlson took the day off, which is great for a big-minute defender like him. Jakob Chychrun returned from a nearly weeklong absence due to illness, and watching him I wasn’t convinced he didn’t rush back.
The Caps have three wins in their last ten games, and one came in the shootout.
I know how you’re feeling. I have to insist that how you’re feeling is – to a big degree – the reverse halo effect of bad finishing percentages. The Caps have ranked 26th in shooting percentage over the past ten games and dead last as saving percentage. Those are freak numbers – not predictive of the team’s future performance or even helpfully correlated with the team’s underlying play, which has been imperfect but not a disaster.
I say this as humbly as I can from a position of hard-earned expertise (i.e. traumatized fan and writer). Every minute of the last 15 years of my life has been haunted by the 2010 playoff series against the Montreal Canadiens. The Caps scored three goals in the final three games of that series despite generating more than 10 expected goals. I know that from memory. I also remember, automatically, instinctually, pathologically, that Alex Semin scored zero goals on 44 shots in that series.
It took years to recognize it, but the correct way to look back on that series was that the Capitals played great, and they should have kept playing like that. The Caps right now are snakebit, but they’re still doing a lot right. (Maybe not so much defending the blue line.) If the Caps are going into the postseason – and if they’re going to play the Habs – they just need to keep grinding. Forget about the ones that didn’t go in.
Just two games left in the rego szn, both on the road. See you on Long Island on Tuesday, when the Capitals surely will score. Surely.
