The Boston Bruins scored four unanswered goals and an empty netter in the third period to hand the Washington Capitals their first regulation loss of the year, 5-3. This was the first time in 10 games the Caps failed to secure at least one point in a game.
Washington fell to 6-1-3 and is now tied with Philadelphia for first place in the Mass Mutual East Division.
Once again, the Caps jumped out to an early 3-0 lead. Zedeno Chara opened the scoring at the 13:26 mark on an assist from Garnett Hathaway and Nick Dowd. Nine seconds later, Daniel Sprong made it 2-0, knifing through the Bruins defense to beat goalie Jaroslov Halak.
John Carlson scored a power-play goal in the second period to make the score 3-0 but for the second game in a row, Boston clawed back.
“I think we’re gonna take a look at some things,” said head coach Peter Laviolette. “I don’t like the fact we weren’t attacking as much, it was like we were looking at the lead.”
David Pastranak cut the lead to 3-1 at the 12:37 mark of the second period, then scored his second of the game early in the third period.
The Caps defense left Craig Smith alone in front of the goal and the Boston forward beat Vitek Vanacek to tie the score 3-3 at the 13:07 mark. After the game, players and coaches said it was a combination of factors that led to the collapse.
“I don’t think it’s just one particular thing,” according to John Carlson. “I think we weren’t executing out of the defensive zone as well as we did, minutes the first 10 or 15 minutes of that last game. Last game I thought we had a lot better effort toward the end of the game than we did tonight.”
“We came out good in the first,” said Daniel Sprong. “The second period was more of a special teams battle a lot of penalties on both sides. The third didn’t go our way. We’ve got to be better and like you said we’re gonna work on it in practice and get ready for New York.”
The Bruins took the lead for the first time with less than three minutes left in the game on a Brandon Carlo goal. The Capitals pulled Vanacek but Brad Marchand’s empty netter sealed the win for Boston.
“We just tonight didn’t work out our way,” said Jakob Vrana. “But you gotta turn the page and learn from the mistakes and focusing on the next game ahead of us and keep rolling here and get back on the winning track.”