Carolina Hurricanes: Three Takeaways From the Loss To Washington

The Goaltending Battle Rages On

The Carolina Hurricanes got two different goaltending efforts

Petr Mrazek started the game and played up until the next whistle once the 10 minute cutoff of the second period passed. Unluckily for him, that happened as Alex Ovechkin ripped a shot past him for his second goal of the game. That sunk his save percentage down to 0.813 as he saved 13 of the 16 shots he saw.

To be fair, Mrazek did not play a bad game. The first goal against was a traditional Ovi slapper on the powerplay from the left dot. He had just saved one of those shots before the Capitals managed to keep the puck in the zone and feed it back to Ovechkin once again. Saving one of those shots is hard. Two in such a short time is a pure miracle.

The defense simply didn’t do enough to get that puck out. Luckily it was the only powerplay goal for the Capitals. The Hurricanes definitely improved on the kill afterward.

The second goal came on a tic tac toe goal from Ovechkin to Evgeny Kuznetsov who was left wide open to the right of Petr. Why Joel Edmondson didn’t bully Kuznetsov from that spot on the ice will forever be an unsolved mystery and will probably appear in the next episode of 60 minutes.

When James Reimer came into the game, the tone of the game shifted. Perhaps it had something to do with the man in the net, but honestly, the defense played a much cleaner game. The Capitals only managed to muster another nine shots which Reimer had an answer for each and every one:

The other end of the ice also got busier as the Hurricanes began to play defense by offense type of game that needs to be implemented against the Rangers. The Capitals began to commit for penalties and Teravainen netted the second goal of the game for the Carolina Hurricanes on the powerplay. Speaking of which…