On a beautiful clear night sky in the Caps faced off against the Hurricanes in the NHL’s Stadium Series matchup at Carter-Finley Stadium the home of the NC State Wolfpack’s football team.
The Capitals did show up in their “Friday Night Lights” style fits rocking some pretty sweet lettermen jackets coming of some school buses, much better than the Cane’s golf attire!
This was the Caps 4th outdoor game (3-1) in front of another packed house.
In another enormous game the Caps were without their Captain Alex Ovechkin who is still in Russia mourning the death of his Father.
The Caps have been beaten by the Metro leading and second in points in the league Canes twice this season, so revenge was on their minds.
The game didn’t start in the Capitals favor in that they went down 1-0 off a deflection in front off a skate of one of Cane’s players which was the 30th time this season the Hurricanes have scored first in a game. Its hard to deny that Carolina starts early and often.
After two power play chances the Caps were only to able to get ONE shot utterly pathetic again! I am not sure what needs to be done but changing our powerplay attack without Ovi is a must fix. Our defense played pretty well and aggressive in the first for once trying to keep the play in he offensive end which was better than normal.
After the start of the second period Backstrom took a tripping penalty the Caps were able to kill it even after multiple great chances but some solid saves form Kuemper.
Kuemper had two solid saves of a shot from the left circle and even redirected the rebound but it landed right in front of Stastny who just got a piece of it to beat Kuemper.
Then not to long after the Canes went on the powerplay again where Kuemper had zero chance at saving Martin Necas rocket of a one-timer to make it 3-0 Hurricanes.
The Caps gave up the final goal on a 2 on 1 tic tac no chance for Keumper to stop it and what most would say was a joke of a period from Washington this game is getting hard to watch at this point from the lack of shots on goal to the lack of defense in front of Darcy just sad hockey to be honest.
Then we have Mantha fighting Jordan Martinook after he slew footed him then cross checked him in the head. Surpisgly he only got two for this thought he would get sent to the showers early.
In the third we got a pride goal as I like to call it when there was no chance in hell they were going to win this game Tom Wilson got his first outdoor goal to end the shutout and did it all him self with a nice little spin and shoot goal.
The Caps have now lost 4 in a row and have looked BAD in those 4 games like real bad yikes. The Caps are back in action Tuesday against the Red Wings where hopefully they can get back in the win column!
The Morning Skate 