Alex Ovechkin hopes to reawaken his scoring touch when the sliding Washington Capitals kick off a three-game homestand against the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday.
The Capitals were disappointed in their first effort of the calendar year as they saw their early multi-goal lead diminish in a 4-3 road loss to the Ottawa Senators on Thursday afternoon.
The visiting squad carried their 2-0 advantage into the second period, but were unable to hold on for the victory.
“We still make a couple of huge mistakes in that (second) period, where you just have to manage the game a little bit better,” Washington coach Spencer Carbery told the media following Thursday’s loss. “And we’re finding ways to do that too often right now, is just shooting ourselves in the foot, with, like I said, big, big mistakes that you just can’t make.”
Washington has been unable to find any consistency of late, failing to record back-to-back victories since its six-game winning streak from Nov. 24-Dec. 3. The Caps own a disappointing 4-6-3 record since then.
A driving factor has been the offensive struggles of the NHL’s all-time leading goal-scorer. Ovechkin has just one goal over his past 13 games, while collecting just four assists over that stretch.
Aliaksei Protas has stepped up during Ovechkin’s cold snap. The Belarusian power forward enters Saturday’s contest riding a five-game point streak, totaling four goals and five assists over that stretch.
Chicago could be the perfect opponent for Ovechkin to get back on track as he has eight goals and seven assists across his past 10 clashes with the Blackhawks. Most recently, he found the back of the net twice in a 5-3 home victory on April 4.
The Connor Bedard-less Blackhawks enter Saturday with a rare slice of hope following an impressive 4-3 home victory over the Dallas Stars on Thursday. It was Chicago’s second time beating Dallas in six days after it took down the Stars 4-3 in a shootout the previous Saturday.
Those two divisional victories were the only wins the Blackhawks have seen in the nine games since losing Bedard to an upper-body injury (2-6-1).
Forward Andre Burakovsky, who tallied two assists in Thursday’s win, was honest when questioned about how the Blackhawks have been able to adjust to playing without Bedard and Frank Nazar, who has been sidelined since Dec. 20 with an upper-body injury.
“We need(ed) to adjust right away from the next game when we lost them,” Burakovsky said. “I think there’s been games where we played really well and we didn’t get two points or any points. It goes up and down. I think, this team, we’ve been lacking a little bit. It can’t be good every single day … Just like we played (Thursday), we need to do that on a regular basis and not just go one good game, and then maybe two bad, and then one good.”
Alongside Burakovsky, Ryan Donato tallied a pair of assists, while Ilya Mikheyev buried two goals in Thursday’s win.
The Capitals have dominated the Blackhawks in recent memory, winning five of the previous six meetings (5-1-0) by outscoring them 28-13.
–Field Level Media
