The Washington Capitals were back in action after the NHL All Star break have concluded and for everyone except Tom Wilson should have been well rested.
Whelp lets just say the Caps “were to rested”, because it looked like they were going through the motions or should I say sleep walking out there.
The Capitals welcomed in the Montreal Canadians who currently sit in 3rd to last place in the Atlantic Division.
The Canadians had a fury of offense in the 1st and in the blink of an eye it was already 3-0 in favor of Montreal.
The first goal was on a Capitals mid ice turnover that created a 3v1 scoring opportunity which the Canadians slammed home to make it 1-0
Montreal then got on board again off a rebound from a point shot into a one timer to beat Lindgren which had no chance to save it. 2-0 team from the north.
Then our fearless leader ended the shutout off on nice low circle pass from Strome to a snapshot to make it 3-1 Montreal. The well rested from Dubai Ovechkin this was his 10th goal of the season and has scored in back to back games.
That’s 832 for his career and is now only 63 away from passing Gretzky.
The 2 goal deficit didn’t last long as Juraj Slafkovsky on the 4v4 wit some nice cycling of the puck by the Canadians ripped a pretty solid toe drag snipe to make it 4-1 MTL.
The Caps showed some fight and brought the deficit back within 2 with 8ish minutes left. During the remaining seconds of the 4v4 Carlson setup up Sandin for a one timer in which he smoked past the Montreal goalie top left side.
Carlson recorded his team leading 26th assist on the goal and has recorded 13 of his 29 points in the final 10 minutes of regulation or overtime.
Slafkovsky scored again on the powerplay and the last goal of the game to make the final 5-2 in favor of Montreal.
The first period tonight was borderline embarrassing for the Caps they were outscored by 3 goals and outshot 14 to 3.
For how bad the 1st was it was surprising how well the 2nd period looked for our boys in that they did the complete opposite of what happened in the 1st. Even though only one goal came of it the shots on net were coming in bunches.
Charlie Lindgren was clearly still on vacation mode being that he only lasted 13:07 in the whole game before getting the shower call and rightfully so after letting 3 goal in on only 9 shots. He has been great for us for the most part hopefully he comes out next start with his head on fire.
This was not the start to the second half of the season we were looking for especially since we are on the edge of the wild card playoff spot, and with that loss it has the Caps on a 5 game losing streak (not great).
I feel like a broken record saying this but the Caps seem to constantly play down to the crappy teams and show up for the good ones. If they want to seriously have a chance to make the playoffs they need to start dominating the bad teams.
The Caps are now 7 points out of both 3rd in the Metro and the final wild card spot.
The boys will be on the road next against two of the leagues top teams in the Florida Panthers and the Boston Bruins going 1-1 would be great or even a couple of OT games would also work any point is a crucial point at this time.
The Morning Skate 