Capitals drop Saturday matinee to Flyers

The 2022 woes continued for the Washington Capitals on Saturday afternoon. In a 2-1 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers, it snapped their five game winning streak in Philly. More importantly, it’s the perfect time to panic. February is about to be over.

Claude Giroux put the Flyers up 1-0 11 seconds into the game. Cam Atkinson doubled that lead putting one past Ilya Samsonov at 18:38. The Flyers outshot the Caps 14-9 in the opening period.

Capitals Coach Peter Laviolette said that the first period was a horrible start for his team:

“We’ve not been good enough—that’s the bottom line. We’re capable of playing better. We’re capable of playing better in that first period and we didn’t. That has to be corrected.”

The Caps had a better second outshooting the Flyers 11-4. They got on the board at 6:54 on a rare power play goal from T.J. Oshie for his sixth of the season. Nicklas Backstrom and Evgeny Kuznetsov had the helpers.

The Caps outshot the Flyers 8-4 in the third period and 28-22 overall but couldn’t get the equalizer. Carter Hart played lights out making 27 saves.

Capitals Head Coach Peter Laviolette told the media after the game that the team needs to stop chasing games:

“The first period we were lousy. There’s no excuse for it. I thought we got better in the second and third period but now we’re chasing the game, which is where we’ve been for the last month and a half—we’re just chasing games.”

There was a moment where Samsonov could’ve sat out. He got hit by a shot in warmups and left the ice for a brief moment before coming back on. He got stung by a shot.

Carl Hagelin told reporters that they need to go on a good run sooner rather than later:

“We got to start finding our game. We got to go on run where we play well game in, game out. We can’t have one good game, one average game, one bad game, one good game. We got to find that consistency. If we do that we’ll be fine. But it’s time to find it.”

The Caps are off today and return home tomorrow to host the Toronto Maple Leafs. A team that basically scored a touchdown and a field goal last night.