Washington captain breaks through as his final NHL season continues with loss at Capital One Arena.
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When Alex Ovechkin said he was coming back for a 22nd season and later said this would be his last, there were questions about how much he had left in the tank.
For the first four games of the season, Ovechkin took a back seat as the Washington Capitals’ depth took over. But finally, on Sunday at Capital One Arena, he looked a little more like himself as he scored his first goal. Jordan Kyrou also got his first goal with Washington, and Boone Jenner added his second in as many games, but it wasn’t enough as the Capitals fell, 5-3, to the Seattle Kraken with sloppy play and poor decisions, especially in the final six minutes.
“We need to become a more intelligent team,” Capitals Coach Spencer Carbery said. “We make some crazy decisions in bad times where I know I feel it on the bench and everybody in the building is like, ‘What is that?’ You just can’t do that at this level. If you want to be a good team and compete, you can’t do that, and we did that consistently. We’ll work on it, we’ll show, and we’ll talk to guys, and we’ll develop these guys and make them better.”
Before they even took the ice Sunday, the Capitals knew they were in for a challenge. Without their top center, Pierre-Luc Dubois (illness) and top defenseman Matt Roy (lower body injury), the Capitals were forced to swap their lines, deviating from the pairings they’ve held, with a few exceptions, since the first day of training camp.
Washington recalled Ethan Frank, who combined on the fourth line with Anthony Beauvillier and Jenner. Justin Sourdif took Dubois’s spot on the line with Alex Tuch and Tom Wilson, while Ovechkin was on the second line with Ilya Protas and Aliaksei Protas. Ryan Leonard, Dylan Strome and Kyrou made up the third line.
“We missed him tonight, but at the same time it’s a good opportunity for other guys to take advantage,” Carbery said of Dubois. “It just didn’t feel like we did a good job of that either.”
With new lines also comes an adjustment. The Capitals missed out on two early power-play opportunities within the first three minutes, the only power plays they would have. The Kraken took the lead six minutes into the game on a goal from Kaapo Kakko.
Just over five minutes later, the Capitals responded as Kyrou scored. Kyrou, who has surpassed the 30-goal mark three times in his career, was acquired from St. Louis Blues in June. Washington had been hoping for more production, but his previous line with the Protas brothers was struggling to find chemistry. On Sunday, with his new line, he finally broke through.
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“It feels great to get my first finally,” Kyrou said. “Feel like I had a couple chances and nice for that one to go in.”
Later in the first period, Ilya Protas forced a turnover on the forecheck, then passed the puck to Ovechkin, who was left wide-open in front of the Kraken’s net. He scored his first goal of the season easily, falling to one knee as the puck went in.
“Training camp didn’t go the way I wanted it,” Ovechkin said. “But you know throughout the games you are going to find your touches, you’re going to find the game rhythm, and I think with the last two games we had a nice chance to score.”
But just as the Capitals found momentum, they quickly lost it. Jordan Eberle tied the score at 2 for the Kraken with seconds to spare in the first period, and Frederick Gaudreau gave them a 3-2 lead in the second period.
For most of the second period, the Capitals lost pucks high in the offensive zone as turnovers added up and the Capitals failed to respond.
“Very, very poor decisions in poor situations,” Carbery said. “For that 15 minutes, you could feel us lose momentum, chances, [goalie Logan Thompson] is bailing us out, we’re giving up looks and then we just keep making the same poor, poor decisions and you get what you say.”
Washington looked sharper to begin the third period, and Jenner was able to tie the game at 3, getting his own rebound to score unassisted. But as time wound down, the Capitals reverted to their sloppy ways. With just under six minutes remaining, Jared McCann easily cut around the Capitals’ defense to score the go-ahead goal. The Kraken added a goal by Ryan Winterton late in the third.
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