Canes’ OT win in NHL playoff series opener leaves Capitals looking for answers
Spencer Carbery had little to say Tuesday night.
The Washington Capitals coach had just watched his team take a 2-1 overtime loss to the Carolina Hurricanes in the opening game of their second-round Stanley Cup playoff series.
The Caps had been outplayed. They had been badly outshot. They had lost the home-ice advantage in the series, which now adds to the urgency to win Game 2 on Thursday and avoid an 0-2 start.
The first postgame question to Carbery was if he expected that kind of game from the Hurricanes, a Metropolitan Division rival it had played four times in the regular season.
“Yeah,” Carbery said.
End of answer. So it went. It was clear that Carbery, a finalist for the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s top coach, did not like much of what transpired over 60 minutes of regulation and the 3:06 of overtime before defenseman Jaccob Slavin’s winning goal for Carolina.
“It wasn’t good and that’s the bottom line,” Carbery said. “Our entire game was not good.”
There were a few exceptions, but only a few this night at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C.
Goalie Logan Thompson, under siege all night, was called “fantastic” by his coach. Logan Stankoven tied the score for Carolina in the third period after a sloppy Caps turnover in their zone, and Slavin’s goal came on a shot through traffic from the right point that had the Canes’ Seth Jarvis and Jordan Staal screening the goalie’s vision.
It also came on the Canes’ 94th shooting attempt and their 33rd shot on goal as Carolina took dead aim. The Canes also had three attempts hit the crossbar and posts.
The Caps had 14 shots, total, and were outshot at even strength 27-10. Their time in the offensive zone was often like a brief cameo — in and out quickly — as the Canes generally handled the puck cleanly enough and moved it up ice.
“I thought our guys played hard every shift, right from the start of the game,” Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour said.
The Caps’ Alex Ovechkin, now the NHL’s all-time goal scorer, had an unusually quiet night and was limited to one shot. So was center Dylan Strome, the Caps’ top point producer this season. Forward Aliaksei Protas had the lone goal, on a two-on-one rush early in the second period, and the Caps’ fourth line might have been their best.
“They were pressuring us all over the ice and we’ve got to find a way to break it,” Strome told the media after the game.
Caps forward Tom Wilson, always a menacing physical presence, did a little snarling and chirping during the game and had a few shoves, but it was otherwise a pretty mild game void of any major skirmishes.
Carbery was told Wilson had said the Caps were a “little off” in the game and asked if he agreed.
“Yeah, that’s accurate,” he said.
What’s the message to the team looking to Game 2?
“There’s a lot that needs to change,” Carbery said. “There’s a lot of X’s and O’s, a lot of physicality stuff, there’s a lot of puck battle stuff. We’ll narrow it down, because you could go down 20 different avenues from tonight.”
A lot of hard checks were thrown by both teams as the teams combined for 75 hits — 44 by the Canes, who had the puck most of the night. William Carrier had a team-high seven hits and Andrei Svechnikov six for Carolina.
Wilson and the Caps played it pretty much straight-up and were beaten by a Canes team that kept its poise when prodded and played a near-flawless road game. One concern: center Mark Jankowski left the game with an undisclosed injury, but Brind’Amour said Wednesday he was feeling better and would be a game-time decision Thursday.
The Canes failed to score on their three power plays in Game 1, but also killed off their two penalties. Carolina went on the power play with 2:07 left in regulation, but spent much of the two minutes carefully passing the puck and looking like a basketball team content to run the clock down and take the last shot to win the game.
The Canes did not convert but had the the only two shots in overtime and were soon mobbing Slavin as the Caps slowly skated off the ice.
“I don’t think anyone expected the playoffs to be a straight line of a lot of ups,” Wilson told the media after the game. “There’s going to be ups and downs, and the next game is the biggest game.”
This story was originally published May 7, 2025 at 9:47 AM.
