You could make the case that last night’s game was lost when the Caps again ceded the first goal of the game, or when they fell behind 2-1, or 3-2, or when they simply just did not seem invested in this game until the third period and were lucky to come away with a point. All of those things would be true and are really probably how this one was lost, even though they got to the coin-flip that is three-on-three overtime and the shootout.
But there wasn’t really one moment on which this game hinged – it was simply the Caps perhaps taking the Sabres too lightly and coming back to get a standings point.
So let’s talk about that shootout for a sec, because this is the second time in the last three games that the Caps have had a game decided by the skills competition and they’ve lost both. They’ve only scored one goal, courtesy of Pierre-Luc Dubois last night, and some of the choices have been…interesting.
Look, in Spencer Carbery we trust, forever and ever. Carbery for president of all things. We rarely have reason to question anything he does and he has more than earned the benefit of the doubt in his short time here. Just for funsies, though, we’re going to question what happened in that shootout.
The first two players to take a shot, Dylan Strome and Pierre-Luc Dubois, were solid options. But with plenty of forwards remaining on the bench, he then turned first to John Carlson, then Jakob Chychrun, for the third and fourth shooters with the game on the line.
This is what happened:
Carlson and Chychrun are both very good offensive defensemen, to be sure, and even going with one of them might have been understandable. Back to back? Perhaps not, especially when you could have gone to anyone from Aliaksei Protas to Tom Wilson to Jakub Vrana.
No one’s going to say that the shootout is something this team needs to practice on a regular basis or give too much thought to the lineup going forward. Shootouts have, thankfully, become more and more rare and have been very rare for the Caps this season; these last two shootouts were the first of the 2024-25 campaign for Washington.
Really the focus should be on simply not getting to the shootout in the first place by winning outright, preferably in regulation – and the Caps had the opportunity to do that against a slumping, not-very-good team, and failed to step up. That they snagged a point courtesy of a two-goal game by Wilson and the game-tying goal by birthday boy Protas was both a relief and something of a miracle.
It’ll just be interesting to see what Carbery and his team come up with for the next shootout, whenever that may be – and we’d kindly suggest trying a different tactic for that next go-round.
Until then, the Caps would do well to (again) take the lessons from this one and focus on getting a win against the visiting Canucks tomorrow.