It’s possible that no one told the Caps that yesterday’s game started at 12:30 p.m., as it took half the game until the Caps finally started to looking like their usual selves. At that point, however, they were already down four goals and no matter how good you are that’s hard to come back from that. They did make an attempt, scoring two goals late in the game (three if you include the goal taken away from Jakob Chychrun), but it wasn’t enough to complete the comeback.
Usually we try to pick a single play that maybe turned the tide in a game…but this game wasn’t lost because of a single play so much as lost with a lot of little plays. The Red Wings simply won all the little battles the first half of the game. Every puck race, every puck battle, and net front battle, they won it.
Three of the Red Wings goals also involved some sort of lucky bounce: on the first goal, the puck bounced over Chychrun’s stick; on the second, the puck bounced over Logan Thompson’s stick, and on their fourth goal, Anthony Beauvillier somehow fumbled the puck that led to the breakaway. The only goal that didn’t involve a bounce was 6’8″ Elmer Soderblom manhandling Dylan Strome in front of the net. None of that really matters, though, because when you are outplaying the other team so much you deserve those type of bounces.
There’s good news and bad news going forward. The good news is the Caps get their chance to redeem themselves quickly with a rematch in Detroit. The bad news is that it’s another afternoon game (which they are notoriously bad at) and it’s still the Red Wings’ Moms trip, giving the home team an extra boost. It won’t be easy – but win or lose, they need to show a much better effort and get back to how they are supposed to play.