Washington Capitals Looking for Answers to Early Defensive Struggles

The Washington Capitals are sitting on top of the East division right now despite falling in two of their past three. The Caps may be in a good spot now but the same defensive struggles we noticed late in the season last year seem to be sticking with the team.

Washington currently has a 3-0-2 record, but they have allowed three or more goals in four of their five games. In both games played in Pittsburgh, the Capitals gave up leads to go on to lose the games in overtime and a shootout.

The games against Buffalo weren’t much better. The Caps secured the win in their season opener despite giving up four goals on 26 shots. In-game two the Caps had their only sound defensive game of the year so far as they defeated the Sabres 2-1 thanks to the rookie goaltender, Vitek Vanecek, making an outstanding NHL debut with 30 saves.

As usual Washington’s success has come from their offense. The Caps have been carried by great starts from Tom Wilson, Nicklas Backstrom, T.J. Oshie, and Jakub Vrana. Alex Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov have also been contributing until they were forced to quarantine and miss four games due to violating COVID-19 protocols.

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Even though the Capitals’ offense is still strong the defense, special teams, and goaltending are all major concerns. If there’s anything Caps fans know, it’s that powerful offenses don’t win cups.

The Capitals penalty kill has a success rate of 83.8%, which is good enough to be ranked 12th in the NHL. In the Pittsburgh game this past Tuesday the Capitals were 1 for 3 on the penalty kill. Washington was 2 for 10 this season until that game and were 5 for 5 against Buffalo last night. The Caps penalty kill has been strong but has been used more than everyone would like to see.

It almost seems as if the Caps play better on defense when they’re down a man. The Caps struggles on defense so far have been at even strength, or if it’s last week against Pittsburgh, a 5 on 3 power play. Don’t even get me started on the power play.

Peter Laviolette is addressing this issue as the Capitals have switched up the defensive pairings yesterday morning’s practice. Now the pairings look like this: Dillon–Carlson, Chara–Schultz, Siegenthaler–Van Riemsdyk, and Fehervary–Jensen.

Chara-Jensen had been the best pair of the Washington bluer liners so far before being -1 in Friday night’s game against Buffalo. Now we’ll look to see if Laviolette has found a nice solution to the team’s struggles with these new pairings or if they will continue to shuffle throughout the season.

With two very young goalies this year in Vanecek and Ilya Samsonov the Caps will need a more consistent defense to continue to win games in the long run and have success in the playoffs.