The Capitals have lost two in a row, but they have a chance to get back on the good side of the ledger when they host Carolina Friday night at Cap One – and Nic Dowd, for one, is happy to be back home after a rough 24 hours in Dallas and Chicago.
“I think it was a little tale of two different games; when we played in Dallas Monday, I actually thought we played pretty well. Those are two really good hockey teams going at it and we gave up a power play goal after we had the lead for the majority of the game, but they got a really fortunate bounce after we limited their opportunities,” Dowd told EB and Bish on Thursday. “Tuesday night, did we play well enough to win? I don't know; we did a good job of getting up on the lead and then we got in some penalty kill trouble in the second, which kind of messed up everyone's rotation. On a back-to-back, guys are already tired, and we're asking guys to kill penalties and makes it a little bit more, so it was challenging, but we were right in that game. In a different timeline, we might walk out of those 2-0 and we have some stuff to work on.”
Adding to that was a plane issue that kept the team in Dallas overnight Monday, so they didn’t arrive into Chicago until a few hours before puck drop.
“Our hockey ops guy and the coaches made the executive decision that the plane wasn't gonna arrive in a timely manner, so we're just gonna go ahead and stay overnight,” Dowd said. “It honestly wasn't too bad. Does it kind of throw a wrench in our schedule? Yeah, but it could have been worse; we could have showed up to the airport, or been on the bus, and they’re like sorry, you have to turn around and find a hotel to stay at, find food to eat…it wasn’t terrible, and I don't think guys are gonna complain too much about staying at the Ritz for an extra night. We kind of stay at a lot of the same hotels in different cities, so I think those hotels kind of understand what's going on, so we’re pretty fortunate.”
But that’s in the past and now it’s on to Carolina, who is right behind the Caps in the standings and will present a big challenge, even as rested as Washington is.
“They’re a really good hockey team; I think that the biggest thing is they play with a lot of speed and pace and play a really specific style,” Dowd said. “They usually lead the league in shot attempts, and at their best, they're putting everything on net and they're making it challenging for teams to exit your own zone. It kind of feels like you get put into a spin cycle a little bit to get guys changing, fresh guys on the ice, and what makes them challenging is that their forwards and defensemen are all committed to playing the same way. There’s not a lot of easy ice out there, and when everyone on their team is shooting the puck and you face 40, 50, 60 attempts a night, there are gonna be some bad bounces that are inevitable.”
Dowd isn’t one to pay attention to standings, especially at this point in the season, so the focus is simply on the game at hand, and go from there.
“I don’t look up standings; I have a good feel for where we're playing, and I didn’t know Carolina was three points back – I just know going into the night that if we beat them, we keep moving on and pushing them away from us,” Dowd said. “Every now and then stuff will pop up on my feed on Instagram, highlights and stuff like that, and I'm not opposed to watching that, but I'm not going on there and looking up where we sit in the standings or other scores.”