Courtesy: Robert Mayer – USA TODAY Sports
Sunrise, Florida may be a beautiful place to be this time of year, but it treated the Washington Capitals sour as they left the BB&T Center with an ugly 3-2 shootout defeat at the hands of the Florida Panthers.
It took ten rounds between the hockey clubs before Tomas Kopecky scored the game-winning goal in the shootout that gave the Panthers the extra point with the victory.
Philipp Grubauer did his best to carry his mates to a fourth-straight victory for Washington, but he 39-save performance wasn’t enough to overcome a lackluster effort from most of the skaters in the white away sweaters Friday night. The 22-year-old netminder showed flashes of brilliance out of the butterfly stance and made a crucial split save with his right pad early in the third stanza. His two goals allowed were due to poor and lazy defensive efforts by Mike Green in Washington’s zone that lead to easy giveaways, who is coming off of one of his worst games of his career Tuesday night against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Washington once again allowed more than 30 shots to face the goaltender, making the mark now 28 times out of their 32 total games where the defense has allowed that many shots to go on target. Outside of Dmitry Orlov yesterday, not one defenseman stood out in a particularly good way.
It’s games like this that Washington must learn how to win. Games against lesser opponents should be one’s where they dominate given their talent pool. They struggled when playing this club earlier in the season — a 3-2 shootout victory for the Capitals Nov. 2 at Verizon Center — mostly due to the fact that Florida outskated them. If Washington had played in back-to-back nights, that might seem like a feasible argument to fall back on. This team was not fatigued. They thought they could cruise into Florida and waltz their way into an easy win. That’s just not how the NHL works. ‘
Forward Eric Fehr has said countless times not only his line, but the team in general tends to over-complicate things and escape the simple fundamentals that every hockey player should practice. It’s happened several times this season. Against the Calgary Flames back on Oct. 26, Washington laid a 5-2 dud in a game that they were never in. It’s noticeable when a team is poised and when a team figures they have a cakewalk and can go through the motions. Grubauer’s stellar job between the pipes last night shouldn’t have been that difficult, but it was and unfortunately, he came out on the losing end.
The positive?
The Capitals came away with a point in what was an ugly game against a bad hockey team. Nicklas Backstrom and Joel Ward tallied the goals — Ward netted his first tally in 13 games. Orlov put together solid shifts at the back end each time he stepped on the ice and Grubauer remains a talking point with the organization. Head coach Adam Oates will likely go back to Michal Neuvirth when healthy, but this save certainly will stick out in his mind.
Courtesy: Japers Rink
Washington will practice at the Kettler Capitals Iceplex at 11:30 Saturday in preparation for their 3:00 face-off against the Philadelphia Flyers Sunday afternoon.
Notes: Alexander Ovechkin played one of his worst games of the season. He was pressing and tried to get too cute on a lot of shifts into the Florida zone. To the Panthers’ credit, they usually marked him with two guys and kept him along the boards, preventing him from entering the slot and prime scoring areas. With Friday’s game going to a shootout, the Capitals have already played in 10 shootouts in just 32 regular season games. Washington’s franchise record for most shootouts in a season is 13 during the 2005-2006 season. This team needs to find ways to play better in regulation and at full strength or else this could lead to negative results in the long term if they make the postseason.
