A bad start and lack of scoring depth plague Caps in loss to Flyers originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington
An emotional week caught up with the Capitals on Friday in a lackluster 4-2 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers. With the loss, Washington remains in second place in the East Division with 73 points, two behind the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Caps remain two points ahead of the Boston Bruins and five points ahead of the New York Islanders.
Here is how the loss happened.
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A bad start
Heading into this game, the Flyers had allowed the first goal in 12 of their last 13 games while Washington had scored the first goal in five of its last six. That made it a pretty bad sign when Joel Farabee put Philadelphia up 1-0 just 1:44 into the game.
There was definitely a lot of pinball in the first goal as the bouncing puck hit the outside of the net, hit the crossbar, hit Farabee and eventually hit Vanecek himself before going into the net. That's a few unlucky bounces, but the Flyers seemed to have their legs going early while the Caps did not. They earned that first goal.
Wade Allison
Playing in just his 12th career NHL game, Allison tallied two goals to break this game open and give Philadelphia a 3-1 lead in the second period.
The first looked like an innocent enough play as the Flyers dumped the puck on a counter-attack. The puck wheeled around the boards from the left to the right and right to Allison who was left uncovered. Zdeno Chara shifted to the right with Trevor van Riemsdyk and signaled for Sheary to pick up Allison. Instead, Allison grabbed the loose puck and fired a quick wrister into the net.
On his second, the bad bounces returned for Washington. The Flyers attacked on a delayed penalty against the Caps and Allison hit the puck out of the air after a Philippe Myers wrap-around attempt bounced up.
Allison now has four career NHL goals, three of which came against Washington.
Scoring depth
Having so many top players is starting to catch up with Washington and that is showing in the lack of scoring depth.
Alex Ovechkin, Justin Schultz and Evgeny Kuznetsov were all out for this game and the offense suffered as a result.
Including Friday, in their last seven games the Caps have scored 23 goals. On the surface, that's good. It's over three goals per game. Twelve of those 23, however, have come from two players: Sprong and Oshie. Those were the two goal scorers again on Friday.
It's great that Sprong is stepping up in Ovechkin's absence and that Oshie continues to elevate his game, but those two players are not enough to carry the offense every night and that was the case on Friday.
A step back for the offense was inevitable with all the players who have been in and out of the lineup, but the Caps need more goals from the rest of the offense.
