The Washington Capitals blew a late lead at United Center that led to a Chicago Blackhawks 3-2 comeback win. Washington ends their back to back road trip with two losses with the Carolina Hurricanes looming Friday night back home.
Pierre-Luc Dubois struck quickly for the Caps early at 4:18 of the opening period for his fifth goal of the season which came at 4:16. Andrew Mangiapane added his seventh goal of the season witht the assists coming from Lars Eller with his seventh and Jakub Vrana with his fourth.
2-0 was the score after 20 in favor of the good guys. Chicago outshot Washington 9-5 in the opening period. In the second period the Caps were outshot 9-6 but outshot the Blackhawks 11-5 in the thrid to only trail by shots overall 23-22. Still though they could only muster two goals and it came back to haunt them later on.
After a scoreless second period, one shorthanded goal in the form of Ilya Mikheyev for his fourth of the season 51 seconds into the third ocmpletely changed the course of the game. TJ Brodie then notched his second of the season at 14:07. Then it was Ryan Donato with his 11th of the season at 17:42 to complete the comeback for Chicago.
These teams will meet again but not until April 4. In the meantime, the Caps will host the Carolina Hurricanes this Friday night from Capital One Arena with a 7 p.m. puck drop on Monumental Sports Network.
The loss drops the Caps record to 21-8-2 with 44 points and now they're a point back of the New Jersey Devils for first place in the Metropolitan Division.
Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery would say after the game via Bruce Miles of NHL.com:
"I just didn't think we had it from the start of the game right to the finish. We had nothing. The excuse that I'm sure will be dropped is the ravel and that, but (we) should still be able to get through that. We just, for whatever reason, didn't have it. "Spencer Carbery
Andrew Mangiapane, who made it 2-0 earlier it the contest, added, "I didn't thinkI had too much space there, so I just wanted to kind of take it to the net. I was able to get middle ice there to be able to get that in. Definitely nice to get on the scoresheet after missing last night there. But, yeah, it's a tough one to lose here."