The Washington Capitals fell to the New York Rangers for the second time this season, this time by a 4-1 score at Capital One Arena on Saturday afternoon. The loss snapped a two game winning streak for the Capitals.
After Lars Eller was called for roughing the Rangers went on the power play for the second time and scored on a goal from Chris Kreider at 14:57. 1-0 would be the score after one with the Caps leading in shots 8-6.
The Rangers doubled their lead at 17:44 in the second when 2020 number one draft pick Alexis Lafreniere scored. Ryan Strome made it 3-0 with a goal at 18:43. With seconds ticking away before the second intermission, Dmitry Orlov got the Caps on the board by winning a board battle, driving to the net and ripping in a shot for his first goal of the season. Nick Jensen had the assist.
Although the Rangers are a young team, John Carlson noted after the game that they are a tenacious team. Via Tarik El-Bashir of The Athletic:
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"“They are a tenacious team; they come at you hard. (But) we look more towards what our execution was. We shot ourselves in the foot way too much today to get ourselves going especially early on, and throughout the game I didn’t like our response.”"
Jensen noted that the Rangers speed was an X-factor throughout:
"“For one they are really fast team in this league and in today’s game so anyone that has type of speed, it can be difficult to play against.”"
In other NHL news, there are two outdoor NHL games on Lake Tahoe. With weather issues over there, they moved the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers game to 7 p.m. tomorrow night. How does this affect the Caps? Well guess what, they get to play another matinee game. Don’t tell Evgeny Kuznetsov.
The Caps game against the New Jersey Devils has been moved from 7 p.m. to 2 p.m. to accommodate the outdoor game. The Caps game will be broadcasted exclusively on NBC. The Caps are 0-3-2 in matinees this season.
Orlov was the lone Caps player to score this afternoon. He is the 12th different player to score Washington’s first goal of the game. Only Nicklas Backstrom (four times) and Conor Sheary (two times) have scored the team’s first goal multiple times.
Again puck drop for tomorrow’s game against the New Jersey Devils is at 2 p.m. Hopefully the Caps can end these afternoon game woes.