Niemi and the Sharks Shut Out the Caps

Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin summed up the game with these words shortly after the team fell to the visiting San Jose Sharks by a score of 2-0, “We just didn’t score. We didn’t shoot the puck.” 

It was the eighth time this season the team has been shutout and is a step in the wrong direction with the Capitals coming off two of their biggest wins of the season.

The Capitals came out with a good pace, lifted by the return of forward Alexander Semin, who returned after missing the last 12 games. He even set up the first Caps goal of the night.

Semin wristed the puck at San Jose goaltender Antti Niemi from the right wing boards. Niemi squeezed and stopped moving, not realizing the puck was sitting in the crease behind him. After sitting there for a second, it was hit in by either Niemi’s skate or the stick of Mathieu Perreault as he lunged to tap in the rebound.

As soon as the celebration started, it ended as the referee immediately washed out the goal. He had blown the play dead after the initial save when he was at the wrong angle and could not see the puck sitting behind Niemi. The referee’s whistle cannot be overridden by a review and so the play stood as a save and play resumed moments later.

“It was deflating,” said Washington head coach Bruce Boudreau after the game. “I mean, obviously it [the whistle] shouldn’t have been blown. The referee came up and apologized. Doesn’t do us a lot of good, we are a team that plays a lot better with a lead, these days, than coming from behind…But you can’t blame that one chance, we didn’t get opportunities because we didn’t deserve them.”

The game remained scoreless until midway through the third period when Logan Couture scored his NHL rookie leading 24^th goal of the season on a quick shot from the left wing circle that found its way through Michal Neuvirth’s pads. Dan Boyle would follow that up with another San Jose goal just over two minutes later.

“In the end, he played good for 51 minutes,” said Boudreau when asked about Neuvirth, who was coming off a . “But if you want to be a great goalie in this league, when the game is on the line, you have to be the one to stop those. I thought those goals were not of the variety that should have beaten him, but at the same time I thought he kept us in for the first period.”

The Capitals stepped up the pressure on San Jose after those goals, but could not solve Niemi, who recorded his second straight shutout for the Sharks. They finished the third period with 12 shots on goal, after only registering four in the second.

After winning two big games against rivals Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh, Washington was looking to turn things around and make a strong push for the lead in the Southeast Division, but they lost track of their game plan according to Boudreau.

“They decided to get cute since they had a little bit of success, but [when] you don’t stick with the game plan, bad things usually happen,” he said. 

The team has three days off before playing the Kings and heading on the road for a long five game stretch, including a rematch with San Jose on Feb. 17.

Additional Notes

-       Mike Green sat out Tuesday’s game after taking a puck to the side of the head on Sunday. Boudreau said Green felt fine when he skated, but the team wanted to be cautious and take a few more tests.

-       Tuesday marked the eighth time the Capitals have been shutout this season, the most since 1998-1999 when the team was shutout 11 times and missed the playoffs. The franchise record is 12, set in 1974-1975, their inaugural season when they only won eight games.

-       Including this game, the Capitals play five straight games against the Pacific Division. They host the Los Angeles Kings on Saturday before heading on the road to play Phoenix, Anaheim and San Jose next week.