1. Goalie Injuries
The great thing about sports is that one loss – no matter how ugly, and they don’t come much uglier than the Caps’ Game 3 humiliation – only counts as one loss. Lick your wounds, learn your lessons, and move on to the next game.
Unfortunately for the Caps, the repeated bludgeoning they endured on the scoreboard was accompanied by something that might last a while longer, as injury was added to insult in the form of Dylan Strome crashing into Logan Thompson while the two desperately tried and failed to prevent yet another Montreal tally and the latter had to be helped off the ice:
Thompson – who was so good in Games 1 and 2, less so in Game 3 – was replaced by Charlie Lindgren and did not return. Meanwhile, his counterpart at the other end of the ice, Sam Montembeault, had to leave the game during the second period, replaced by Jakub Dobes for the duration. Neither coach was able to provide a substantive update on his starter’s status post-game, so we’ll see how things line up for Game 4.
2. Soul-Crushing Boners
The Thompson injury, unsurprisingly given how the game was going, came as a direct result of a Caps turnover, this one by Strome in the neutral zone:
The Caps’ puck management and decision-making on the night was abysmal. A run-down of just the play-by-play of the Montreal goals and what immediately preceded them tells the story:
Defensive zone giveaway, bad penalty and uncredited giveaway (this was the one that John Carlson vomited up), defensive zone giveaway, actual own-goal off Brandon Duhaime’s stick, the uncredited neutral zone giveaway by Strome from above, and a power-play layup. Of note, two of those goals came off bad defensive-zone giveaways in the last minute of a period with the Caps up a goal (in the first) or tied (in the second). Simply inexcusable stuff. (Of further note, the Caps’ penalty kill is now just 6-for-9 in the series, and desperately needs Aliaksei Protas back in the lineup ASAP.)
The Caps were only tagged with 17 giveaways by the official scorer, but that dramatically understates their sloppiness with the puck. Postgame, Spencer Carbery had the understatement of the year:
The key word there is “poise,” and the Caps had none whatsoever. Frankly, every time the Canadiens have really pushed them in the series so far, Washington has unraveled. You could have a fierce debate over which has been worse in those times (the third periods in Games 1 and 2, the entirety of Game 3) between their decision-making and their execution, but it all comes back to poise in big moments. The Caps – who were a great third period team all year and never panicked regardless of the situation – need to find that mental fortitude and that’s going to be a big test for their presumptive Jack Adams winner-in-waiting and his squad.
3. Nonsense
Physicality was always going to be a hallmark of this series, specifically the Caps imposing their “heavy hockey” will on a smaller Montreal team. Through two games, the Caps executed on that gameplan and it earned them two wins (not to mention the potential downstream effects). Part of the reason it worked was that the Caps weren’t out there chasing hits or being physical at the expense of other elements of winning hockey, but rather it was organic – the hits came within the structure of their systems, on the forecheck, in the corners, etc.
That wasn’t the case in Game 3, as Washington was chasing the puck and the hits from the outset, often taking themselves out of position and plays, and making themselves easy targets for penalties (say what you want about some of the iffier calls – and Montreal clearly decided that instead of playing through the Caps’ physicality, they were going to play up every bit of contact – but the refs can’t make bad calls if you don’t give ’em the chance to). And everything boiled over at the end of the second period with whatever the hell this was:
If you were ever wondering what the opposite of a bench-clearing brawl was, there’s your answer (also, if you were to list the places you would not want to end up on the floor, the team bench at an NHL game would be high on the list… gross).
When the Caps are at their best, they’re a very physical team. That’s what they’re built for. But it’s not their defining trait; it’s a means to a more dominant puck-possession end. When they lose sight of that, things go sideways and they become a sideshow.
For the Caps, nothing worked on Friday night – not their puck management, not their physicality, not either unit of their special teams, not their goaltending, not their team defense. But that was Friday night and Game 4 starts at 0-0. Where it goes from there is up to them.