{"id":360794,"date":"2025-12-20T23:12:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T23:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/360794\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T23:12:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T23:12:09","slug":"wings-beat-caps-5-2-in-maybe-the-worst-game-of-the-season-are-the-caps-bad-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/360794\/","title":{"rendered":"Wings beat Caps 5-2 in maybe the worst game of the season? Are the Caps bad now?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"WSH
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ud83d\udcf8 1bscarbro from #crashers<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

In their blowout loss to the Detroit Red Wings, the Washington Capitals did little to assuage worries that they\u2019re a team in decline. This game is in a tight competition for worst game of the year, neck-and-neck with most of the other games of the last two weeks.<\/p>\n

Ryan\u2019s brother John Leonard opened scoring for both his team and his NHL career by crashing the net. Trevor\u2019s brother James van Riemsdyk doubled the lead by seizing on a rebound.<\/p>\n

The Wings earned two more goals in the second period: Soderblom outmanuevered Strome to score backhanded, then Seider scored on a breakaway. Aliaksei Protas busted up the shutout before intermission arrived.<\/p>\n

Marty Fehervary beat John Gibson on an improvised shot to make the third period a little more interesting, but not that much more interesting. Jakob Chychrun had a goal overturned for interference \u2013 more on that in a moment \u2013 and they couldn\u2019t effect a real comeback. Dylan Larkin, who totally dived on the Carlson hooking penalty, got a long-distance empty-netter.<\/p>\n

Caps lose.<\/p>\n

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Whatever it is \u2013 the it that makes a team capable of being good like they had been earlier in the season, the Caps didn\u2019t have it. They were getting outshot 13 to 5 during five-on-five at the end of the first period. They\u2019ve been getting more and more outshot in more and more games. It\u2019s concerning.
\nWings winger John Leonard, brother of rapidly recovering<\/a> Caps winger Ryan Leonard, played in his third NHL game on Sunday and recorded his first NHL goal in the first period. That\u2019s the kind of goal you can build a career on.<\/p>\n

Another Caps brother, James van Riemsdyk, lit up the Caps net. Real Mario\/Luigi hours. Or maybe Luigi\/Waluigi. Wait, what is the relationship between Luigi and Waluigi? Mario and Luigi are brothers. Wario and Waluigi and brothers. Wario is Mario\u2019s childhood rival? Waluigi is my instalock Mario Kart character, but I don\u2019t know if he has a material or genetic connection to Luigi. I don\u2019t know if he has genes. Anyway, the Caps won\u2019t have to play any more siblings for 22 hours, so we don\u2019t have to worry.
\nAliaksei Protas has goals in back-to-back games. Thank you for ending the shutout, Pro, somewhat singlehanded. And thank you, Wings goalie John Gibson, for being so deep in the net there.<\/p>\n

Protas was the main character again when Jakob Chychrun scored only to have it nullified because Protas interfered with Gibson. Washington\u2019s argument \u2013 and probably yours as well \u2013 is that Ben Chiarot pushed Protas into Gibson, and then Gibson chose to engage Protas. You\u2019re right about that. But Protas also made himself comfy in the paint, putting his glove on the crossbar and sorta compelling Gibson to respond. I think it was the right call, but I\u2019m so grumpy about this game that I don\u2019t want you to trust my analysis. I\u2019ve been compromised.<\/p>\n

When a game starts going bad, I start looking at it differently. I think, for each shift, which team won that unit of time? Wilson-Protas-Sourdif had a good one at the end of the first. Ovechkin\u2019s line had a good shift prior to the Protas hooking penalty. Otherwise, it was the Wings winning, almost always, until the third. Before that, I can\u2019t think of two back-to-back shifts where the Caps looked dangerous.
\nThere was a line-up shake-up in the third period. I never get to do the cute lineup component we built for the website, so here it is:<\/p>\n

Ovechkin<\/p>\n

McMichael<\/p>\n

Miroshnichenko<\/p>\n

The Caps player who had the best day was probably Hendrix Lapierre, healthy-scratched, allegedly trade bait, but at least untainted by this mess.<\/p>\n

#joebsuitofthenight of the noon thirtylooking pretty 480p for some reason<\/p>\n

\u2014 RMNB (@rmnb.bsky.social)<\/a> 2025-12-20T17:29:00.571Z<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think we\u2019re allowed to say \u201cburn the tape\u201d anymore. We need to sear the tape into the eyeballs of the Caps. Or, alternately, we need to run a series of blood tests and invasive swabs to see if they have Epstein-Barr or something. They need to release the files.<\/p>\n

See you tomorrow at 1 PM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\ud83d\udcf8 1bscarbro from #crashers In their blowout loss to the Detroit Red Wings, the Washington Capitals did little…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-360794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}