Pulling out of tailspin has become a high priority
PITTSBURGH — The Washington Capitals are suddenly a desperate team.
While they haven’t quite fallen out of first place in the Metropolitan Division — they are tied with the Philadelphia Flyers with 87 points — they continue to flail, with an array of miscues continuing to spiral with the postseason a month away. For a team that early in the season looked primed to win the Presidents’ Trophy, Washington is facing a tough reality, going against division opponents who are finding their footing just as the Capitals are losing theirs.
The Flyers, winners of eight straight, are playing their best hockey down the stretch, while the Pittsburgh Penguins are now just three points behind both teams with a game in hand.
The Capitals will face the Penguins twice more during the regular season, and both contests will be at PPG Arena. The two teams will meet Saturday in a high-stakes matinee, and again March 22.
The Capitals and Penguins split their previous two matchups in February. Washington won the most recent battle, 5-3 on Feb. 23. At the time, the win was seen as a potential breakthrough game for the Capitals; now, not so much.
The Capitals are 10-12-2 against opponents from the Metropolitan Division. Including Saturday’s matchup, they have four division games left in the regular season.
“You got to go through adversity, you got to go through bad times [and] you got to learn some tough things,” Capitals coach Todd Reirden said. “Our group is learning them and it is certainly not any fun. It would be better to leave here with the two points, but that is not the case, so we have to continue to learn and go through the process.”
Meantime, the Penguins, who lost six straight to close out February, have won their past two and now enter a rough stretch of division games.
Pittsburgh is catching the Capitals at a vulnerable time, following losses on consecutive nights during which they gave up 11 goals combined and repeated the same miscues with no clear end in sight. Players seem to acknowledge a sense of urgency, but the question is whether that can translate into consistency over a full 60 minutes.
“I’m confident with the team. I know the response is there,” captain Alex Ovechkin said. “We just have to realize we have to play smart, we have to play simple. As soon as we start thinking through it too much and do some stupid decisions on the ice, it cost us the game.”
In Thursday night’s 6-5 overtime loss to the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden, during which Mika Zibanejad scored five goals including the overtime winner, the Capitals couldn’t stay out of their own way. Ovechkin, who scored two late goals including the equalizer with 42.7 seconds left to send the game into overtime and save a point in the standings, addressed that afterward.
“Obviously our line didn’t play well at all,” Ovechkin said. “And I think we get mad. We try to do some bad things on the ice. Me, [Evgeny Kuznetsov] and you know it cost us zone time and we have to play better, no doubt. It’s a good lesson.
“It’s a hard lesson, but we have to take it and accept it … you know last night I make mistake and it cost us a game tonight. I lost my D again and I have to play better in the defensive zone, especially when team needs it.”
The Capitals have followed the same pattern the last two games: get momentum by scoring a big goal, surrender it because of penalties, bounce back with a kill or another goal and follow that up with another penalty.
The Capitals took seven minor penalties against the Rangers, including three consecutive penalties in the third period that allowed Zibanejad to score his fourth goal.
“I think it’s just individual mishaps for the most part,” John Carlson said of the plethora of penalties. “I think a lot of the time it is not even for breakdowns. Sometimes you can live with them when it is a breakdown and someone has got to overextend or get caught out of position, but a lot of our penalties right now feel like they are not because of that. And that’s got to be better.
“We got to hold each other accountable. We can only say or show so much. We need to clean it up ourselves.”