Washington Capitals: Breaking down the highs and lows of January
The Washington Capitals got off to a good start despite facing some adversity with key players either injured or on COVID-19 protocol. Still, if you told me they would be 6-1-3 entering tonight’s contest against the New York Rangers, I would gladly take it. They had a nearly perfect January, granted their lone regulation loss came on the first of February.
The scary part is despite this start, both fans and those who cover the team are still wondering when the Caps will play their best game, their most complete 60 minute effort. The potential is there with the buy in mentality from Peter Laviolette, who was a significant upgrade over Todd Reirden.
“I think Lavi’s very good at being honest about what he expects on the ice, how he wants it to happen. He’s very upfront about our video meetings and why we’re seeing certain clips and why not. He makes it very easy to understand what is going to bring us success. We’ve got a lot of guys — or everyone — who already believes in it. We see it on the ice.”
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The Caps opened the season with two wins in Buffalo over the Sabres. The first game was a 6-4 win while the second game saw them get a 2-1 win on Vitek Vanecek‘s NHL debut. Speaking of Vanecek, he has by far been the MVP of this team so far this season. He has stepped up with Ilya Samsonov out due to COVID.
Unfortunately, the Caps came up short against the Pittsburgh Penguins on the road, dropping both contests in the shootout and overtime. That was their one blemish on an otherwise good month.
They returned home to an empty Capital One Arena without fans and got a shootout win over the Sabres. It was a weird home opener. They still did traditions like Rock the Red Carpet but it was all virtual. The noise came from the piped in crowd noise which included the horn guy.
The fans would’ve loved to have been inside for this homestand. They got an impressive win over the New York Islanders on a clutch goal from Justin Schultz. The next game, they overcame a 3-0 deficit by scoring six unanswered goals including five in the second period.
Finally, the month of January ended with a game against the Boston Bruins where they surrendered a 3-0 lead but got a goal in overtime from Alex Ovechkin in his first game back in the lineup.
The troubling part is the team is still missing Evgeny Kuznetsov, Schultz due to injury, Lars Eller due to injury and others. But despite that adversity the team has gone next man up.
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February started off bad but the Caps hope to bounce back tonight at The Garden when they take on the Rangers. Puck drop is at 7 p.m. on NBC Sports Washington.