Washington is 3-7-1 over its last 11 games The Capitals have little time to stew over their worst performance of the season.
In the midst of an 11-game slump that has knocked them out of first place in the Southeast Division, Washington has four games over the next six days. Either the Caps break out of the current slide or dig themselves a deeper hole. One thing is for certain: Saturday’s performance in a 7-1 loss at Toronto — one day after a players-only meeting — was unacceptable to everyone involved.
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“It’s obvious we’re being outworked right now,” forward Brooks Laich said. “That’s a problem. We have other problems, too. But everything stems from hard work. I think that’s the foundation for every successful team.”
Washington is 3-7-1 over its last 11 games and — pending Ottawa’s late game Sunday night at Vancouver — could have fallen into a tie for ninth place. It’s still early, but this isn’t what anyone expected after adding four free agents to a team that finished with the most points in the Eastern Conference.
As Laich noted, the Toronto game exposed multiple deficiencies. The blueline was suspect from the start after defenseman Jeff Schultz’s ugly turnover led directly to a Maple Leafs goal early in the first period. The forecheck was non-existent. The penalty kill struggled for the second game in a row, and the power play is mired in an 0-for-25 drought.
The coaching staff spent a 60-minute practice at Kettler Iceplex on Sunday attempting to nudge their players back to their October form when they started 7-0. But that’s all the preparation they’ll get for Monday’s home game against the Phoenix Coyotes (10-5-3, 23 points), one of the NHL’s most structured, disciplined teams.
“We were getting so loose both in the neutral zone and the defensive zone that we had to pull and tighten it all together,” coach Bruce Boudreau said. “And sometimes when you’re playing every second day you don’t get a chance to practice and very slowly it just disappears. What was once tight and compact quickly gets broken. We thought it was a little broken in a couple of the goals [Saturday] so we had to get back to practicing them.”
It would help if star left wing Alex Ovechkin got going. For just the second time in his career, Ovechkin has not recorded a point in his last four games. He has never gone five straight games without a point — though, as Boudreau said, it might be a matter of time considering Ovechkin had 17 shots on goal during Washington’s winless three-game road trip to Nashville, Winnipeg and Toronto. It was one trip everyone involved wants to put behind them as soon as possible.
“We keep moving forward. You obviously want to learn from it, but at some point in hockey you have to play with a little bit of amnesia,” Laich said. “It’s like the quarterback. If he throws an interception that’s a bad pass, life goes on. You’ve got to move on. You learn from it, but you have to forget it.”
