The Washington Capitals have found their footing once again. Since the month of March started the Caps are 4-0-1. This coming after an extended period of struggles. From the first of January until the very end of February Washington was 9-12-2. Those prolonged struggles helped the Capitals go from one of the top teams in the metro division to the second wild card team.
But the team has seemingly turned things around since the third month of the year kicked off. On top of winning four out of five games, and three of those games being wins in regulation, they have also defeated two certain playoff teams. One of those wins was very convincing in beating the Carolina Hurricanes 4-0 on the 3rd. The other was a great performance up in Calgary where the Capitals won 5-4 against a dangerous Flames team.
The other wins this month have come against “weaker” competition. The Capitals beat the Kraken at home before going on to win against the Canucks in Vancouver. You also need to stick an overtime loss to Edmonton in there as well.
Things seem to be going well. Or are they?
I have been very confused by the Capitals current good stretch of games. There is nothing confusing about Washington’s win over Carolina to start the month. I think if you ask a lot of Capitals analysts or followers what the best game of the season was that was probably it. Since then, the Capitals have kind of been winning, maybe in spite of themselves.
To follow up that win vs the Hurricanes with a less than convincing win vs a pretty bad Kraken team. They won 5-2, but in that game they blew a 2-0 game. They also got heavily out shot attempted 50-30, and they also lost the scoring chances 22-18. They did win the high danger attempts battle 8-7.
That game just adds to the confusion that is the Washington Capitals to me right now. The road trip is the part that I have trouble calling good. The result was fantastic. You go on a three game road trip and pick up five of a possible six points. That’s is undeniably great. It’s just how they got there is the part that I don’t know how to analyze.
Like we said, beating the Flames in Calgary was awesome. That was a good game vs a definite playoff team and a team looking more and more like a contender in the western conference. The Capitals also had to dig themselves out of a 0-2 hole in that game as well.
The Caps then follow that game with a game they were lucky to get a point out of in Edmonton. Without Ilya Samsonov that game would have been a blowout, early. The Oilers jumped all over Washington early. The stats do not show how potentially bad that period could have been. The only stat you could look at is shots in the first period, those were 20-9 Oilers. If you look at stats for the entire game, not just 5v5 the Oilers out attempted the Caps 72-57, they out chanced Washington 45-26 and they won the high danger attempt battle 23-6. Without Samsonov being on top of his game, that is an easy L.
They finish up their western Canada trip in Vancouver where they eventually get a win as well. That was a game, where they played pretty well but at the same time were maybe lucky to get out of there with a W rather than a regulation loss.
The luck started early with a weird bounce that ends up going off of Evengy Kuznetsov’s shoulder and into the net. One of the weirder goals you will see during a hockey season. That was the first of an eventual 2-0 lead the Capitals would take into the third period. A lead that they would completely give up.
Washington allowed three goals in less than five minutes to start the final frame of the road trip and went from a 2-0 lead to trailing 3-2 quickly. Kuznetsov scored with a little less than five minutes to go in the game to tie the game and securing his hat trick and the Capitals a point as the teams remained deadlocked with sixty minutes gone. Lars Eller would score in overtime and Washington walked away winners.
That was a game where I thought Washington played pretty good, had an iffy third period and somehow walked away with a win. Two of the three games on that trip you could probably call them lucky. That after beating the best team they would face first and doing so in impressive fashion.
So how good of a road trip was it? The bottom line, they won two of three, picked up five of six points and at the end of the day that is all that matters.
The other thing you could say is they found ways to win or accumulate points. That is what good teams do. After their extended bad stretch the Capitals cannot get picky about how they get points. For about two months the Capitals were a pretty bad team who found ways to lose games. So far in March they are proving to be a good team finding ways to win.
Right now, that is about the best thing I can say about the most recent road trip. They won, that’s all that matters. But for now I am going to stop short at saying the Capitals are back. They still have some things to prove before I can confidently say that.