Maybe they should go back on the road.
A Verizon Center homecoming provided an all-too-familiar result for the Capitals, who were thumped yet again by the New York Rangers. Defenseman Mike Green was knocked out of the game early in the first period, the Rangers scored twice on the power play and forward Erik Christensen had two goals and two assists in a 6-0 victory over Washington on Friday night.
Since Dec. 4 the Caps are now 5-7-6 at home in 18 games. In the entire 2009-10 season they were 30-5-6 at Verizon Center. They addressed those home-ice failures in a team meeting this week and re-iterated it after the morning skate on Friday. Obviously, the message didn’t get across.
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| Caps Postgame – 6-0 loss to Rangers |
“Our fans deserve better,” said Washington coach Bruce Boudreau. “That’s three games in a row at home. We deserved to get booed there. It’s not fun when you come home and you’ve got the best fans in the world and you play like that.”
Green’s status is the biggest concern. He had missed six of the last seven games after taking a slapshot by Pittsburgh’s Brooks Orpik off the side of his head on Feb. 6. Inner-ear trauma was the listed cause and an illness kept him sidelined during practice Thursday.
A game-time decision, Green took warm-ups and felt ready to play. He lasted all of 2 minutes, 25 seconds. Rangers forward Derek Stepan had been cross-checked by Green during an early shift in the New York offensive zone. He retaliated with a crunching shoulder to the head that will draw scrutiny from the NHL league office. Neither player was penalized by the officials, however. Green sat out as a precaution, according to Boudreau, but did not travel with the team to Long Island for tomorrow’s game against the New York Islanders.
Stepan added insult to injury when he scored a power-play goal at 17:52 of the second period to put the game out of reach, 4-0. Christensen had scored his second goal of the night on a power play at 4:19 of the second.
Washington’s reliable penalty kill is in a funk. New York scored on 2-of-4 attempts. That makes six goals against in the last 16 short-handed situations for the Caps. Meanwhile, the futile power play went 0-for-5.
“Our [penalty kill] has been playing pretty well and it kind of took the wind out of our sails,” said Washington forward Matt Hendricks. “I’m not making any excuses tonight. It was a tough defeat.”
Former Caps defenseman Steve Eminger even provided a goal – his second of the season – at 5:56 of the first period to open the scoring. Vinny Prospal finished it with his third-period goal at 6:16. About the lone positive for Washington was it outshot New York 35 to 28. But even then the Caps earned few follow-up chances on Henrik Lundqvist (35 saves), who finished with his league-leading eighth shutout of the season. Michal Neuvirth gave up six goals on 28 shots. New York finished the season series 3-1 against Washington with a 14-1 margin in the final three meetings.
“It’s not who we are. We’re a better team than a team that loses one, wins one, wins two, loses two,” said veteran forward Mike Knuble. “We’re a better team than one that plays .500 hockey that’s for sure. We’ll find it. Win [Saturday] and you go .500 for the weekend and that’s the thing we’ve got to shoot for. We’ve got to forget about this one if possible.”
