Back-to-backs starting with Sabres, Penguins
The western swing of the Capitals’ current five-game road trip was a microcosm of a frustrating season.
The Caps escaped relatively unharmed despite a 1-2 record in games at Phoenix, Anaheim and San Jose last week. They maintained their position in the Eastern Conference playoff chase and even put some distance between themselves and ninth place, which represents the unthinkable: missing the Stanley Cup playoffs completely.
But a pair of 3-2 losses to the Coyotes and Sharks also seemed like more of the same to a team that lost its scoring ability almost three months ago and has yet to recover it. With the NHL’s trade deadline fast approaching on Feb.?28 and just 23 games remaining in the regular season, time is running out.
| Up next |
| Capitals at Sabres |
| When » Sunday, 12:30 p.m. |
| Where » HSBC Arena, Buffalo, N.Y. |
| TV » NBC |
| Caps notes |
| » Defenseman Mike Green has missed four of the past five games with inner-ear trauma. But he did return to practice Saturday. |
| » Washington returned defenseman Patrick McNeill to Hershey of the American Hockey League on Saturday. He had been recalled as insurance while the Caps were on the West Coast but did not appear in a game. |
| » Hershey defenseman Sheldon Souray — a 34-year-old veteran on loan from Edmonton, where he had 53 points just two years ago — was put on re-entry waivers Saturday and is available to any NHL team at half his prorated $5.4 million salary cap hit. |
“You wish you could do things [well] for 80 straight games,” Caps coach Bruce Boudreau told reporters after practice in suburban Buffalo on Saturday afternoon. “It’s something that we’ve got to fix. It seems like one thing goes when another one gets fixed.”
Washington (30-19-10, 70 points) can put more distance between itself and the nonplayoff teams on Sunday afternoon when it continues its road trip in Buffalo. But it is also the type of game the Caps will face often down the stretch — a beatable opponent with a much tougher contest looming the following day.
In this case, Washington immediately heads to Pittsburgh for a game Monday night. Five times in the season’s final seven weeks the Caps face one of the NHL’s top 11 teams in the second game of a back-to-back on the road. That is far from ideal. About the only silver lining there is that Washington also plays 12 of its final 23 games against the league’s 10 worst teams.
That stretch starts against the Sabres (27-24-6, 60 points), who have lost two in a row and scored just one goal in those contests as they try to remain in the playoff race. The Caps lost in overtime at Buffalo on Nov. 13 and took a 4-2 victory at Verizon Center four days later.
“The one great thing is it puts us in control. If we want to do well, it’s up to us to do well,” Boudreau said. “If we’re playing Buffalo, they’re all four-point games rather than two-point games. It should be a highly emotional last two months of the season.”
