Written by DCist contributor Eli Resnick
Playing two games in two nights, four hundred miles apart, the Washington Capitals looked like a team in the middle of a grueling road trip last night, in their uninspired 4-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens at Verizon Center. There were flashes of hope along the way. Lawrence Nycholat’s first-period slap-shot was deflected into the net, but the goal was immediately washed out. The Capitals also dished out a wave of solid hits after Donald Brashear won the kind of fight that should make it hard for him to find anybody else to fight with for a while.
On the whole, though, the Capitals looked exhausted and discombobulated. Their momentum seeped away from them in the second period when, down by two goals, they twice left beautiful drop passes just inside the blueline on the left wing boards to create scoring chances on three-on-two breakaways, only to find that each time a coach pulled the trailer off for a line-change, leaving the puck open for a turnover with two forwards too deep to backcheck. This repeated miscue ruined the team’s two best chances to change the momentum of the game, and wrecked the Caps’ collective confidence enough to lead to a third Canadiens goal. The bright spot is that, in the last couple of games, the Capitals have not given up, even when down several goals against better teams. Just as they battled back to a more respectable score in Buffalo on Tuesday, the Capitals played hard through the third period last night, drawing penalties that, with the help of the referees, helped them get back into the action for an exciting ending.
The other high point of last night’s game was seeing Steve Eminger in control of the flow of play without the muscular help of John Erskine. It looks like Eminger has settled his game down during the first half of this season, and all the injuries the team currently faces are giving him a chance to show how much he has improved. Hopefully when Shaone Morrisonn, Bryan Muir and Erskine are back in the lineup, Eminger will continue to play steady on the blueline and make plays behind both goal-lines. If so, the Caps defensive development could be on the right track after all.
