Capitals get shutout at home 1-0 to Golden Knights

The Washington Capitals simply came out flat on Monday night in a 1-0 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights at Capital One Arena. At least the puppies that were in attendance for Caps Canine Night were so cute.

The first period was scoreless as Vegas outshot Washington 9-7. At 5:29 of the second Michael Amadio scored the game’s only goal. The Golden Knights outshot the Caps 14-13 in the second period while the Caps outshot the Golden Knights 14-6 making it 34-29 overall. So they didn’t go down without a fight but the power play was still atrocious.

While the Caps penalty kill was good stopping all four of their penalties, the Caps power play went 0 for 5 including with a five on three opportunity. You simply cannot do that and I don’t care if you’re playing a good team like Vegas or a bad team like Arizona. Blaine Forsythe has got to go.

The Caps loss dropped their record to 23-11-9 including 3-5-2 this month. Conor Sheary, who has returned to the lineup, said the team just simply needs to get their confidence back:

“We just got to get that confidence back, we’ve got to start scoring goals, getting secondary scoring, our power play has gotta get going. When all those things click we’re a dangerous team. It seems right now it’s not going that way. I think we’ll find it, I think we all have confidence in that. Hopefully next game is when it starts.”

Here’s how bad it’s been in the month of January. The Caps are 30th in The NHL with 2.3 goals per game, ahead of the Seattle Kraken and Philadelphia Flyers. The power play has a success rate of just 10.7 percent this month, which is good for 29th in the league just ahead of the Kraken, the Columbus Blue Jackets, and the Arizona Coyotes. Their 0 for 5 effort dropped them to 30th in the league overall at 14.2 percent.

The Caps power play put up eight shots but Robin Lehner turned each away. Tom Wilson believes the team has had good looks but knows they need to better take advantage of that:

“That seems like the theme a little bit, good looks and no goal. So, at the end of the day, one of us just has to put it in the net. That’s our job, that’s why we’re out there. We’ve been generating a lot of good looks on the power play, just they’re not going in so we’ve got to find a way to bear down and put it in the back of the net.”

The Caps will look to bounce back on Wednesday night against the San Jose Sharks. They will need to. Finishing this month strong is important.