The fifth game in our look back at games that mattered in
the Washington Capitals’ 2013-2014 season provides an illustration of one
reason the Capitals struggled so much to build momentum over the course of the
season, an inability to win low scoring games.
January 12, 2014: Buffalo (12-26-5) at Washington (22-16-6)
Result: Sabres 2 – Capitals 1 (OT/SO)
Background: When the
Buffalo Sabres came to town on January 12th, they were a team made
to order for the Capitals. The Capitals
were in the midst of gaining momentum after enduring a four game losing streak
that spilled over from the end of 2013 into the start of the new calendar year, winning consecutive games over the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Toronto Maple
Leafs before the Sabres came to town.
On the other hand, the Sabres came to Verizon Center not
having won a road game in more than two months.
Since earning a 5-4 Gimmick win in San Jose on November 5th the
Sabres were 0-9-2 away from First Niagara Center as they descended on D.C.
What could go wrong?
Why It Mattered: The
last time these clubs met, in the penultimate game of the 2013 portion of the
season, the Capitals had a devil of a time trying to solve Sabres' goaltender Ryan
Miller. They did not do so until the
third period when a Troy Brouwer goal tied the game. It would be the only puck the Caps put behind
Miller all night, including six rounds of a shootout in a 2-1 Buffalo win.
The Caps found home ice more to their liking in their
rematch against Miller, at least early. Mid-way through the first period Washington
scored on a bit of a fluke play. It
started when Joel Ward laid off the puck to Jason Chimera at the Buffalo blue
line. Chimera skated the puck down the
wall to the far edge of the left wing circle and wristed a pass toward Marcus
Johansson heading to the far post. The
puck never got to Johansson, though. Brian
Flynn was backchecking on the play for the Sabres and had inside position on
Johansson. He tried to interrupt the
pass by extending his stick into the path of the puck, but the result was to
redirect the biscuit over Miller’s right pad and in, giving the Caps a 1-0
lead.
Once more, however, it would be the only puck the Caps would be able
to put behind Miller. That meant that
for the Caps to win, they would have to find a way to keep the Sabres off the
scoreboard unless they wanted to put their faith in trick shots again.
They did not.
In their December 29th meeting, Buffalo scored
their lone goal with less than two minutes remaining in the second period. On this night they would score their lone
goal with less than two minutes remaining in the first period. With the Sabres on a power play they gained
the offensive zone with speed as the clock ticked under two minutes to play in
the opening frame. Cody Hodgson backed
off the Capital defense and slid the puck to Matt Moulson on the left wing at
the Capitals’ blue line. Moulson sent the
puck across to Christian Ehrhoff who, from along the right wing wall, fired the
puck to the Washington net. The shot was
hung up in the skates of Hodgson, who charged the net. The puck squirted out to the low slot where
Tyler Ennis was all alone to put the puck past goalie Philipp Grubauer.
The irony of the sequence was that when it started in the Capitals
zone with Hodgson carrying the puck out, Ennis and Joel Ward got tangled up
with both tumbling to the ice behind the play.
Ennis popped up and beat Ward down the ice to put himself in a position
to pounce on the loose puck. The Caps
just did not have enough men to cover as much space as there was for Ennis to
find an opening.
That would be all the Sabres could manage against Grubauer,
who held the Sabres to a single goal in the hockey portion of the December 29th
contest as well. So, in a replay of that December 29th game, the teams went to the freestyle
competition. Miller turned an attempt by
Eric Fehr aside. Grubauer blockered away
a Matt Moulson attempt. Alex Ovechkin
deked Miller to the ice but could not lift the puck over Miller’s left
pad. Linus Omark tried to distract
Grubauer with a kick step as he approached, but Grubauer smothered his
shot. When Nicklas Backstrom failed at
the top of the third round, it was up to Cody Hodgson for Buffalo. When Hodgson snapped the puck over Grubauer’s
glove and in, the Sabres had their second straight 2-1 trick shot win over the
Caps in two weeks.
The Takeaway: With
this loss the Caps had a record of 3-13-4 in games in which they scored two or
fewer goals in the hockey portion of games.
All of their wins were officially recorded as 3-2 wins earned in the
Gimmick. They would finish the season
4-25-7 in 36 games in which they scored two or fewer goals in regulation or overtime,
all four wins coming in the après-party phase of those contests.
The more immediate problem was that this loss was the first
in what would be a seven-game losing streak (0-5-2), the Caps’ longest since
the eight-game winless skid chronicled by HBO in the run-up to the 2011 Winter
Classic. Buffalo had a strange effect on
the Caps in this season. There was the streak following this loss, and the
Gimmick loss to the Sabres on December 29th was the first in what
would be a four-game winless streak (0-2-2).
Not even beating the Sabres seemed to work; the Caps beat them, 5-4 in
overtime, on January 28th then lost their next two games. If the Caps never had to play the Sabres,
they might have avoided 13 losses (0-8-5 in games following those played
against the Sabres).
All joking aside, the Caps’ inability to win low scoring
games reflected the lack of having goalies steal games when scoring was at a
premium. Grubauer could hardly be
faulted for this loss or the one on December 29th. He stopped 46 of 48 shots in those two games,
a .958 save percentage, and only allowed the two game-deciding trick shot
tallies. However, it remained that
Capitals goalies were just not quite good enough to ever find themselves on the good
side of those low-scoring affairs.
In the end…
If it was these sorts of games that George McPhee had in
mind when he claimed in early February that better goaltending would have meant ten more standings points, it would be a high bar for goalies anywhere to
clear. Still, going winless in 36 such
low scoring games, save for the Bettman Miracle, played at least a part in the
Caps’ failure to reach the post-season for a seventh consecutive year.
There is another issue here.
The Caps were 1-0-2 against the Sabres in 2013-2014. Overall they were 19-10-8 against teams not
qualifying for the playoffs. While that
might look, at first glance, like a good record (it is a 102-point pace over 82
games), it is hardly dominating over the also-rans of the league. It is in no small part a reason why the Caps
were also-rans themselves.
There was, however, one far more important more reason why
this game mattered. It was an
opportunity to grant a wish over a weekend to a tough guy in the best sense of
the term…
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