The Washington Capitals lost Game 1 of their Eastern Conference second-round series against the Carolina Hurricanes 2-1 in overtime. The scoreboard indicated it was a close game. To hear the Capitals describe it, they might as well have lost by 10 goals.
"It wasn't good and that's the bottom line. Our entire game was not good," said Capitals coach Spencer Carbery, whose team eliminated the Montreal Canadiens in five games in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
"We'll talk about the things that have to change for Game 2. There's a lot of X's and O's, a lot of physicality stuff, a lot of puck-battle stuff," the coach said. "We'll narrow it down, because you could obviously go down 20 different avenues after tonight. But we'll give them a concrete plan."
Carolina executed its game plan against the Capitals, a combination of tenacious forechecking and shot volume. The Hurricanes had 94 shot attempts, 33 of them getting to goalie Logan Thompson. By contrast, the Capitals had only 34 shot attempts. Alex Ovechkin generated only one shot on goal, a playoff low for him this postseason.
"We didn't play our style of hockey tonight. We kind of let them dictate the game. They're a good team when you let them do that," Washington forward Dylan Strome said. "Five on five, we weren't good enough. I don't know what the shots were, but they weren't pretty for us."
Capitals forward Aliaksei Protas scored his team's only goal but put the blame on himself for the Hurricanes sending the game to overtime. His ill-advised pass to defenseman Alexander Alexeyev in the Capitals' zone created a turnover that led to Logan Stankoven's third goal of the playoffs. Defenseman Jaccob Slavin won the game at 3:06 of overtime.
"It starts with being on the same page together, and I don't think we were today," Protas said.
Carolina coach Rod Brind'Amour said his team was "on it" for the start, despite trailing for a good portion of the game. "Sometimes you get rewarded, and tonight we did," he said.
Game 2 is Thursday night, with the Capitals vowing to improve on their Game 1 effort.
"It seemed like we were a little bit off all night," forward Tom Wilson said. "It's one game. I don't think anyone expected the playoffs to be a straight line of ups. There are going to be ups and downs. The next game is the biggest game."