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Capitals face their failures in falling behind Maple Leafs

greg wyshynski

What they hell happened to the Washington Capitals in their Game 3 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs?

It was a third straight overtime game, and a second straight Toronto victory to take a 2-1 series lead. But the Capitals got the start they wanted on the road, and the game was back-and-forth for most of the way. Then they blew a 5-on-3 power play in the second period, the Leafs found new life and rallied from a two-goal deficit. Then just absolutely rolled the Capitals in the third period into overtime.

“We were on our heels. Not being confident. Not being assertive,” said defenseman Matt Niskanen after the game.

How can that happen?

“Good question,” was his terse reply.

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The Capitals were in no mood for narratives after their Game 3 loss. The rest of the hockey world had that ‘here we go again’ feeling, but Washington swears that being down 2-1 to the lowest seed in the East after winning the Presidents’ Trophy ain’t no thang.

“I don’t think we’ve fallen into that mindset. We have trust in our abilities. We know what we’re capable of. That’s more of an outside the room-driven narrative,” said defenseman John Carlson.

“Just forget it, and move forward. It’s not over yet. We should have won this game. Made some mistakes. A couple of lucky bounces,” said captain Alex Ovechkin.

Should the Capitals have won this game?

Maybe. Obviously, any overtime game is one bounce way from victory. But those third-period penalties hurt. Some pretty underwhelming play from their defensemen hurt; Kevin Shattenkirk has one assist in three games, 13 shots on goal and has skated to a minus-3 thanks to plays like this:

But there are some troubling trends for this team that led to this deficit.

One is a familiar refrain for Capitals fans: Their guy getting out-coached. Alan May of CSN Washington feels that Mike Babcock is schooling Barry Trotz right now, especially when it comes to keeping Alex Ovechkin off the ice:

“They cut his minutes this season to get him ready for the playoffs, and I’ve always thought that when you have the big players like that — he can truck, he can fly — you’ve got to get them warmed up, you’ve got to get their legs going,” May said. “He’s done everything he can; you’ve still got to put him on the ice. I don’t care about the penalties. Fifteen minutes throughout the entire game is not enough. He’s got to play more. Everybody’s going to point their fingers at that damn guy, and there’s a lot of guys that aren’t pulling their weight, but I’m telling you what, right now, Ovechkin is pulling his weight, Backstrom’s pulling his, T.J.’s pulling his, so, other players just need to step up. But I’ll tell you what, when you have the best goal scorer in hockey, and maybe the best line in hockey through the regular season, put ’em on the ice and let them do what they do. You have to score more goals to win the series and the Caps aren’t scoring the goals they need to win the series right now because the top line’s not where they need to be, and that’s on the ice.”

Another giant, honking problem? Faceoffs.

The Capitals are at their best when they swarm the offensive zone and maintain possession for multiple chances. This isn’t a counterpunch team – it’s a team that excels offensively (and by default, defensively) when it cuts the ice by two thirds.

Obviously, you need the puck to possess it, and through three games the Capitals are the worst faceoff team in the attacking zone in the playoffs: 39.1 winning percentage. They were at 50.4 percent in the regular season – middle of the pack, but not disastrous.

In this series, they’re basically handing the Maple Leafs the puck on a pillow in the Toronto zone. If that’s by design, perhaps so they can pressure a diminished blue line corps, OK then – it’s still not producing the desired results.

From JP:

To the extent that face offs matter, more generally, it’s at the extremes, in higher-leverage situations and over larger samples. The Caps have been extremely bad in some of these higher-leverage situations, but the sample size is still small and the Caps are still faring well, overall, in shot attempts.

Speaking of shot attempts, here’s the score and venue adjusted Corsi-for in Game 3, via Corsica:

Again, pretty even until the Leafs just took over with about 12 minutes left in the game.

What’s interesting about this game is that it starts like you’d expect a Capitals’ game would: With Washington getting an early lead. They outscored their opponents by a whopping 42 goals in the first period this season (80 for, 38 against). The Leafs, in contrast, were just a plus-15.

What isn’t keeping with the Capitals’ regular-season success is what’s happening in the third period.

Washington had the fourth-most third-period goals in the NHL this season with 98. They gave up the sixth fewest (68), tied with the Minnesota Wild.

In three games against the Maple Leafs, they haven’t give up a goal, which is the good news. That bad news is that they’ve only scored one themselves.

What this comes back to a rather nebulous concept that, in the end, has defined the Capitals in so many of their playoff failures:

The lack of killer instinct.

You can’t piss away a 5-on-3 for a full two minutes in the playoffs, with the chance to make a two-goal lead – the most dangerous in hockey! – into a three-goal lead.

“We have a couple of chances to shoot the puck. We didn’t,” said Ovechkin, . “I made one mistake when I had a chance to shoot it, and I shoot it right in the middle [of his chest].”

You can’t piss away the first six minutes and 34 seconds of the third period, which is how long it took for the Capitals to register a shot on goal in a tied playoff game.

“We’re putting ourselves in bad positions on breakouts, and they want to take the puck from us,” said center Nicklas Backstrom.

And you can’t piss away a two-goal lead, on the road, against a team whose boundless enthusiasm and unburdened confidence now have them two wins away from upsetting the Stanley Cup favorite in the first round.

“When we’re up 3-1, we’re giving the game away. They got some lucky goals, but that’s hockey,” said Backstrom. “We shouldn’t let them in the game again. But we do.”

It’s what they do, and what they’ve done. Again and again, every postseason.

“You have to fight through it. Obviously we don’t have to panic. We don’t have to do crazy stuff out there. We just have to play our game,” said Ovechkin. “We’re experienced enough, we’re old enough to manage it.”

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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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