Yesterday’s loss in Ottawa was a tough one. The Caps came out flying and were dominant early, but as is often the case in the second game of a back-to-back, the legs started to look tired as the game went on. They blew a two goal lead before giving up the winning goal with less than three minutes left in regulation.
The Caps had just tied the game on a beautiful passing play involving Tom Wilson and Justin Sourdif, finished by an Aliaksei Protas snipe. Dylan Strome was skating the puck through the neutral zone and once he crossed into the offensive zone, he dropped it off to Connor McMichael. McMichael then tried to instantly feed it back to Strome – unfortunately, Strome wasn’t even looking and had an Ottawa player right on him, allowing the pass to be easily disrupted.
This sent the Senators back the other way. Two Caps couldn’t prevent the puck being passed to the highly talented Thomas Chabot, who skated into the slot. For a second time, two Caps couldn’t stop a pass, this time to Fabian Zetterlund, who fired a one-timer past Logan Thompson.
Just a lazy play all over the ice, starting with McMichael, who needs to be better at reading the situation and not making a high-risk play…especially after your team just got the late game-tying goal. Instead of making a more conservative play to help the team get to the end of regulation and snag a point, he attempted a home-run pass that wasn’t needed and it completely blew up in his (and the team’s) face.
The Eastern Confernce and Metro Division standings are so tight right now that every point matters. The Caps have been sputtering of late and need to start scraping together wins (and at a minimum, points). Hopefully this was a valuable lesson as the Caps hit the halfway mark of the season.