WASHINGTON — Peter Laviolette couldn’t reveal why his Washington Capitals fell flat in a 4-1 loss to the New York Islanders on Tuesday evening with a chance to move up in the standings and strengthen their playoff positioning.
“We have been flat,” the veteran NHL coach reported. “I don’t know.”
Playing without having injured captain Alex Ovechkin, the Capitals blew a direct and gave up four unanswered goals to an opponent that has long been out of playoff competition. They authorized power-enjoy objectives to Ryan Pulock and Noah Dobson, goaltender Ilya Samsonov botched a puck-handling endeavor powering the net to enable Casey Cizikas rating brief-handed and Tom Wilson turned the puck around to Anders Lee for New York’s fourth goal of the activity.
“Guys have been out of sync a little little bit, couldn’t get considerably likely,” winger Tom Wilson mentioned. “Kind of an ugly recreation.”
Washington failed to go rival Pittsburgh for 3rd put in the Metropolitan Division just after the Penguins lost at house to Edmonton, but the Caps even now have two far more odds just before the conclusion of the normal season.
Ilya Sorokin made 32 will save to help the Islanders snap a 5-game getting rid of streak close to the close of what has turned into a missing period a yr following achieving the East final. They played a forward short with 17 skaters in its place of the usual 18 following Brock Nelson and Zdeno Chara were being dominated out because of sickness.
Nelson was in uniform and anticipated to engage in until eventually he informed mentor Barry Trotz just prior to warmups he did not really feel perfectly ample.
“Our home is hacking and coughing and there’s a whole lot of guys sick and suitable now they are battling through it,” Trotz explained. “Give them a ton of credit history. I imagined it was a great character get.”
Ovechkin was deemed a match-time determination and is listed as day to day, but it was noticeable before in the day he wasn’t a great bet to participate in with what the group is calling an higher-system personal injury. He slammed remaining shoulder to start with into the boards Sunday, and his standing moving forward is uncertain.
The Capitals acquired some clarification on their to start with-round opponent: Carolina’s victory at the New York Rangers clinched the Metropolitan Division, and that merged with Boston beating Florida usually takes the Hurricanes out of the equation for Washington.
Washington is now established to open up versus the Rangers or Panthers, depending on how the ultimate video games of the period go.
The Capitals could have wrapped up 3rd in the Metro when they participate in the Islanders again Thursday — experienced they received Tuesday. Now, it’ll appear down to Friday to see no matter if Washington can keep away from Jap Meeting-main Florida and a extra tough path by the Atlantic Division facet of the bracket.
“We simply cannot enjoy like we did tonight,” Laviolette reported. “This isn’t who we are. This isn’t our M.O. It’s a person night, it was awful and so that’s that.”
On the way to a 2nd tough decline in a row, the Capitals got a little bit of a scare when winger T.J. Oshie took a puck off his remaining foot and left the recreation briefly. Conor Sheary, who scored their only intention on a deflection in the 1st period of time, also went down late in the 2nd blocking a shot but stayed in.
“He concluded the activity,” Laviolette said of Oshie. “He came back again and performed, and he seemed to be good.”
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