Islanders 3, Caps 0
The bad Caps showed up tonight at Verizon Center. It had been a good while since we last saw them – Dec. 13 in a 5-1 loss to Philadelphia, to be exact. After seven home wins in a row, never once trailing in any of those games, Washington was due for a clunker.
They were too soft in the offensive zone, reverting to the “pretty” plays that always seem to get this team in trouble. The Islanders played a good road game, to be sure, and kept Washington firing away from 30-to-40 feet away. Can’t remember too many 10-bell saves from Evgeni Nabokov in this one. Check out our game story here.
“We were a little bit too cute around the net. A few of the guys were trying to make the third pass and they were just sliding all over the place and blocking them,” Caps coach Dale Hunter said. “We definitely have to get more pucks to the net….The play’s there and the play’s not. You got to read [the play]. If the guy’s laying down there’s not a pass there. You just got to throw it on net and hope for a rebound.”
Too many times Washington’s players didn’t do that. If it wasn’t a perfect opportunity they skated around, dished to a teammate and hoped for something better. All well and good unless the opponent doesn’t let you get anything better. Even when the Caps showed life late in the second period and for brief spells in the third there was never anyone following the initial shot into the hard area right in front of the opposing goals. So one good chance would whither instead of turning into sustained momentum.
“There’s not that action. We don’t make hits in the first period,” Alex Ovechkin said. “We just play casual and try make some plays we usually never do. But again we had only four shots in first period. It’s not our game. We have to make more shots on net and create some more opportunity in front of the net.”
He was far from the only one with that opinion.
“I just think that we had opportunities to shoot the puck – we didn’t shoot the puck,” Matt Hendricks said. “We tried to make cute plays, passes. We weren’t putting pucks in areas where we could go get them. I feel bad for [goalie Tomas Vokoun] – he had to make a lot of stops tonight. He had a lot of pucks at him.”
Vokoun stopped 25 of 28 shots. He played well and Hunter refused to place any blame on his veteran goalie for this one. But down a couple goals in the second period and with little offensive push, they had to take chances and that left Vokoun on an island for parts of the game.
“It sounds like a simple game. Get pucks off the glass and out of your zone and then get pucks off the glass and into their zone,” defenseman Karl Alzner said. “And sometimes we forget that and try to make a few too many plays and cross-ice passes. And not against this team. They stand up too much. We didn’t play very smart. That’s pretty much all there is too it.”
Hunter made it clear that rookie defenseman Dmitry Orlov’s cross-ice pass that led to an Islanders goal in the second period was unacceptable. Not sure if there was a miscommunication with John Carlson, who was caught on the ice there. Orlov has been playing with Dennis Wideman lately. Looked like Carlson pushed forward and then dropped back into the zone just as Orlov sent his pass away – to no one. The Islanders jumped on it and some quick passing led to a goal by PA Parenteau and a 2-0 lead. Didn’t help that New York’s power play was just flat out better than Washington’s penalty kill – from zone entries to smooth passing to generous amounts of point shots with good traffic in front.
“And it’s costing us where there are mistakes and people are getting beat,” Hunter said. “The video don’t lie who gets beat or not. So they’ll know their mistakes and giveaways. Definitely two power-play goals where we didn’t get back to the net. And we didn’t get down on one. So we give them the goals that they got.”
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