That was probably the loss that puts us out of mathematical reach, with only a 13-0 stretch POSSIBLY saving this season, and with the wildcard teams sitting at a 99 point pace (.609), that might not even get us there.
1st Period
The first started a little slowly, with both teams feeling each other out, until a broken play in the D-zone popped out to Ryan Leonard of the Caps who made no mistake wiring a wrister short side over Allen’s shoulder. That is now 41 of 69 games the Devils have given up the first goal
this season, which seems like a bad strategy.
The Devils had a couple of good looks this period, but largely got outplayed getting outchanced 8-1, and lost HD chances 3-0. Jack and Bratt connected on a 3 on 2 that Thompson made an unnecessarily dramatic glove save on, they muffed a 2 on 1 where Jack refused to shoot, Mercer had a good short side semi-break, and toward the end of the period Brown floated a nice pass to Bratt who fumbled it coming in hard behind the Washington D. Off to the 2nd period, all things considered they were pretty fortunate to escape 1-0 them.
2nd Period
The second was similar, getting mostly dominated by the Capitals and just showing an inability to get through he neutral zone with any speed. The story of the game increasingly became Jake Allen who made stopped several grade A chances, and they caught a break on a Protas short side chance that sat on the goal line for an uncomfortable second. He also made great netformt stop on Ovechkin, and stopped Beavillier on 2 good chances.
The Devils would get two power plays in the period, one for a high stick on Lenni, and one after a Wilson hook at. Gritsyuk breakaway. Thought that could’ve been a penalty shot, but the ended the period on the power play after Dougie rang one off the cross bar. Still 1-0 them and just as fortunate as they got outchanced 10-6 and were only able to muster 1 solitary HD chance through 40.
3rd Period
The game opened up in the third, and if you’re going to take any sort of positive out of this the Devils pushed hard and didn’t crumble like we have seen so often, but couldn’t capitalize. They tilted the ice so much, the y wound up positive for xGF% (52%) and shots. They had multiple net mouth scrambles, but the Caps boxed out well and Thompson closed the door.
With around 3 minutes left, the Devils pulled Allen, but the Caps got it out and Protas hit the empty netter, which would turn out to be the dagger in this one.
We did get one late on the subsequent 6 on 5 as Bratt took a cross ice pass from Jack and roofed it over a sliding Van Reimsdyk and Thompson’s shoulder.
Some Scattered Thoughts
Jake Allen showed once again that he is our better goalie right now, I’d say they’ve gotta mix him in more, but we are playing for pride more than anything right now. This would’ve been a far uglier scoreboard without him. Thompson made some good saves in his own right, but only a Mercer chance in the 3rd off a sneaky Timo feed felt like it was true robbery.
Not much really noticeable good or bad besides Allen, literally almost nothing happened for the Devils. The Caps did an excellent job of neutralizing any sort of rush game through the neutral zone, and largely kept us to the perimeter the entire game until the 3rd.
LGD
