So far this season, the Capitals’ defense has been much like the proverbial little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. When they’re good, they’re very, very good; when they’re bad, they…run around in their own zone and give up goals in an extremely annoying fashion.
We might be paraphrasing a bit there.
That dichotomy was on display last night in Tampa, where the Caps held the Lightning to just a single goal through 40+ minutes. Then the third period started and they simply forgot how to defense for a few minutes and it cost them.
The first of two Tampa strikes within about 45 seconds happened when the Caps got hemmed into the zone, with the Lightning’s puck movement seeming to stymie them for just a brief window resulting in an all-too-familiar give-and-go between Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov. Point gets free of the Caps’ defenders, slips to the right side of Charlie Lindgren, and taps home a pass from Kucherov to make it 2-0 before Rasmus Sandin can catch up with him:
Not ideal, but a two-goal deficit still felt manageable at this point. The Caps continued to get chances, and considering how their offense has been clicking so far, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that they could come back.
But then less than a minute later, that deficit became three:
The puck got bouncing around, the Caps’ third line got spun around, and by the end of the play, Washington was down by three and Conor Geekie had his first NHL goal.
Congrats, I guess.
Giving up two quick goals is deflating, and on a night where nothing seemed to be getting through Vasilevskiy, perhaps even more so. The Caps couldn’t find a response after that and dropped just their second game of the season, snapping their winning streak at five. They’ll get a chance to shake this one off and start a brand new streak when they host the Rangers Tuesday night.