A season that began with comeback win and a great deal of hope in St. Louis some ten and a half months ago ended in ashes in Toronto on Thursday night when the Caps came up empty in an elimination situation in Game 5 against the New York Islanders. Playing their second must-win game in three nights, the Caps couldn't find any kind of spark and they bowed out meekly in a 4-0 loss.
A deep and diverse offensive attack that was augmented even further with the trade deadline acquisition of Ilya Kovalchuk was as flat as old soda throughout the playoffs. Washington's primary scoring was quiet and its secondary scoring was non-existent, particularly in this series with the Isles when only three players found the back of the net and only one - captain Alex Ovechkin - scored at even strength.
"Looking back at our time here in Toronto," says Caps coach Todd Reirden, "For whatever reason, our team wasn't able to mentally and physically get to our game for long enough. We had one game where we did it, and other than that we weren't able to find the game that gives us the best chance to have success. That's going to be something that we'll be reassessing, and looking at this whole process."
The Caps rarely looked right in these playoffs and especially in this series, and much credit must go to the Islanders for stifling Washington's attack.
"I think we did a great job as a team," says Isles defenseman Adam Pelech. "It takes everyone. It takes the forwards, it takes the defensemen and great goaltending to limit a team like that's offense. I think we showed a ton of commitment and we got some big saves from [goaltender Semyon Varlamov] at times, which we need."
In Tuesday's comeback win in Game 4, the Caps finally found the "other level" of their game they'd been seeking since arriving in the Toronto bubble on July 26. They put together 40 great minutes of hockey to rally from a 2-0 deficit, staving off elimination and offering hope that they might yet be able to make a series of it.
But in the wake of Game 5, the final 40 minutes of Tuesday's game look more like fool's gold.
"Coming into it, we knew what kind of hockey team they are over there and how they can be very frustrating to play against," says Caps defenseman John Carlson. "We just we didn't do enough long enough to use that to our advantage. And when we did, it thought we took it to them pretty good. But it was it wasn't even close to enough to put anything together."
For the fifth time in as many games in the series, Washington wasn't able to muster as many as 30 shots on net on Thursday night. Most of their entries into the attack zone were one-and-done or none-and-done, and they rarely threatened. Varlamov had a relatively easy 21-save shutout, needing to make strong stops on Richard Panik and Lars Eller in the first and Nicklas Backstrom early in the third.
Although the Caps teed up 66 shots on the night, their shot selection was generally poor and the Islanders blocked nearly half (31) of them.
New York netted the only goal it would need on a first-period power play, scoring just its second extra-man tally of the series.
With Nic Dowd off for hooking, the Caps had one of their best penalty killers and their best right-handed center in the box, with a right dot draw coming in their end. They lost the face-off and quickly fell behind 1-0 when Anthony Beauvillier put back a rebound of a Brock Nelson shot at 10:19 of the first, 17 seconds after Dowd was seated.
New York came out assertively in the second, frustrating the Caps in the neutral zone and turning back their every effort to get anything established in the offensive zone. One of those failed forays resulted in a 3-on-2 rush for the Islanders in the opposite direction, and New York took full advantage to double its lead.
Josh Bailey made a deft play to feed Beauvillier, whose backhander beat Braden Holtby to the far side at 9:33 of the second.
But with half the game still in front of them, the Caps were never able to capture any of the offensive wherewithal that sustained them through a 26-6-5 start to the season. Even with the second most experienced team in the playoffs and all seven of their top scorers from the 2018 Cup championship still on the roster, they couldn't generate a consistent attack, game after game.
A couple of late empty-netters acccounted for the 4-0 final.
When it was all said and done, the Caps finished the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs with an anemic total of six even-strength goals in eight games. The only teams beneath them on that ledger were play-in teams that left the bubble more than a week ago, prior to the start of the first round.
"Anytime you get a chance to close a team out, you want to get it done," says Bailey. "Last game hurt. We talked about it and tried to tweak a couple of things, and really just make sure we were ready to go from the drop of the puck.
"A lot of guys stepped up and did what needed to be done. When we're playing the right way, you can feel it on the bench. Against a team like that, you want to get past them and not let this drag out and I thought we did what was necessary tonight."
As for the Isles, they mirrored their play-in round performance when they ousted the Florida Panthers in four games in a best-of-five set. After dominating to go up 2-0 in that series, they couldn't quite pull off the sweep of the Panthers. But they administered the death blow in Game 4, winning 5-1. The Isles allowed Florida just three even-strength goals in the four games, and they only surrendered three goals at 5-on-5 to the Caps in five games in this series.
Islanders coach Barry Trotz, in his second season as New York's bench boss after leading the Caps to the Cup in 2018, presided over a second straight first-round upset of Metropolitan Division rival in a short series. In 2019, the Trotz-coached Islanders surprisingly swept aside the Pittsburgh Penguins in four games.
"That's what we envisioned," says Trotz of his team's Game 5 performance. "We made some adjustments. That's how we wanted to play, and the players bought into it, and they executed it. Obviously with the lead, we wanted to frustrate them and I think we did a pretty good job of jamming it up and making it real hard for them."
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