Whelp it only took the boys 3 days into the new year to get their first loss.
It’s never easy playing a rested team on a back to back and it showed.
New Jersey got on the board first with two goals in a 7 minute span from goals by Nico Hischier and Luke Hughes on the power play giving the Caps and early 2-0 hole.
Connor McMichael got us on the board with a beautiful snipe for his first career power play goal and his 7th goal of the season to bring the deficit to 1 going into the 2nd period.
The Devils made it a two goal game with 11:52 remaining in the second.
Evgeny Kuznetsoz answered the Devils goal with one of his own off a rocket pass from Ovi and did some dancing to beat the Devil’s goal five-hole to make the score 3-2 in favor of NJ.
This was Kuzy’s 6th goal of the season and 35th point when playing NJ which is the most points he has against a single opponent.
Then John Carlson tied the game with a slap shot on the power play close to the blue line. On the goal Kuzy passed Mike Gartner for 5th most assists in franchise history (392).
The Devils then regained the lead with 13 seconds left in the 2nd giving them a one goal lead going into the 3rd.
The 3rd was a sore sight to see from our guys giving up goals to Erik Haula and McLeod to make the score 6-3 in favor of NJ.
This was a tough back to back for the Caps playing a well rested NJ team who is highly skilled and fast even if they banged up between the pipes at the moment.
It was nice to see a guy like McMichael be active tonight because him and his line have been relatively quiet over the past couple games and given how bad our power play is we need more guys that can score regualrly on it.
The Caps struggled with puck control throughout the whole 2nd and it showed with the two goals given up right after we got some momentum back.
We finally got to see the Capital’s debut of Max Pacioretty in a red sweater. This was his first game in nearly a year coming of his second achilles injury of his career. They had him on a line with Strome and Phillips and didn’t get much ice time obviously needs to get the legs back under him.
We had Hunter Shepard in net tonight and he was not at his best, but also doesn’t help when Kuzy doesn’t skate hard after a puck and leaves Shep out to dry and crushes a guy instead.
The Capitals get a much needed day off and then they welcome Carolina into town. This stretch of schedule is easily their toughest road so if they can steal some big division points over the next couple weeks could be huge for the wild card hunt at the end of the season.
The Morning Skate 