The Capitals hired new-look Quinn Hughes Wild on Tuesday night. In my opinion the Wild are the most underrated team in the league, maybe this is the season they can finally make a cup run.
The Wild got on the board early in the first via a Vladimir Tarasenko at the top of the zone who fired a great pass from behind the Cap’s net to beat a very well-screened Charlie Lindgren (I counted three guys). 1-0 Bad Guys.
Then in the 2nd the Wild on the power play, Kirill Kaprizov was able to grab what looked like a juicy rebound from his own teammates and hammered it home for the 2-0 Wild lead.
Then early in the third, Tarasenko got back on the board with an Ovechkin-esque goal on the offensive zone faceoff, giving the Wild a 3-0 lead.
When it looked like the Capitals had a solid 4v2 scoring chance, a wide shot from McMichael gave the Wild a nice 1v1 transition opportunity, with Tarasenko showing some silky mitts to draw the Cap defenders to him, leaving a crashing Danila Yurov open to beat Lindgren, 4-0, not us.
To make matters worse, as people would say, the icing on the cake, the Capitals turn the puck over on their power play, allowing Matt Bouldy to make it 5-0 on the shorthanded goal.
As bad as this game felt, this was only the second time the Caps have been eliminated this season and let’s face it, we deserved to keep our mouths shut last night. (Other shutout was against Dallas)
This makes it sound like the Wild dominated all facets of the game, but the time of possession was relatively even.
As far as our special teams, specifically our power play, which is so hit or miss. The Caps have scored just one power-play goal in their last fifteen chances.
Also, we can’t have a game where Ovechkin has ZERO shots on goal in 15:12 minutes of ice time.
Obviously scoring is a big deal for this team and based on puckpedia we have $12 million available to spend at the deadline to hopefully find a scorer.
This is now 3 defeats in a row for the boys. They have a chance to right the ship on Thursday against the Maple Leafs, who I believe have put together a somewhat similar roster.
#Turnovers #plague #Capitals #shutout #losses