FINISHING FAILURE: Why the Washington Capitals MUST Solve Scoring Woes to WIN Close Games Now

FINISHING FAILURE: Why the Washington Capitals MUST Solve Scoring Woes to WIN Close Games Now

On today’s show, the Capitals drop another game, this time to the Tampa Bay Lightning, and it’s the same story, their inability to finish. How do the Capitals play a complete game, and how do they get back into the win column? I’ll discuss next on this edition of Locked on Capitals. Your Locked On Capitals, your daily podcast on the Washington Capitals, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. Well, hello and welcome into this edition of Locked On Capitals, part of the Locked On Network, your team every day. My name is Dan Holy. I’ve covered the Capitals for the past four seasons for Locked On and various other outlets before that. I’m also the host of the weekly show called The Capitals Minute Cast available wherever you find your podcasts. And as always, I want to thank you for making this your first listen of the day and making Locked On the number one sports network. Today’s episode is brought to you by our friends at FanDuel. Download the FDuel app now by visiting fanduel.com and win $300 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins. So, in this edition of Locked On Capitals, we talk about the Caps as they continue to struggle uh as they drop their most recent game against the Tampa Bay Lightning. And it wasn’t for a lack of opportunities. It was more about their inability to finish. How do they finish? How do they play a complete game? I’ll talk about that a bit later. We’ll talk about pure Luke Dubois’s impact and being out of the lineup. And uh we get the latest on how much time he will be missing. How much time? I’ll talk about that. And then to close out the show, Logan Thompson can’t save the Capitals. Big picture here. He has been the silver lining to what has been a pretty poor start to the 2526 season. But just to get it going here, let’s talk about the task at hand and yet again the Capitals inability to finish games. And uh like I said, uh a lot of opportunities to win this game. I I think at this point it’s just a matter of head games. They’re caught up in their own head because if you take a look at the box score shots on goal, Capitals 30, the Tampa Bay Lightning 19. Um so the opportunities are there. It’s just their inability to finish. again talking the power play. The Capitals were 0 for one uh where the Lightning were one for two and uh those are all the kind of things that get drawn into focus and ultimately you know why the Capitals aren’t winning games. Uh so let’s dive into that in the first segment talking about what is going wrong and uh how do they turn this team around because you know you take a look at it they were able to pick up a win against the Blues here somewhat recently but other than that this has been a truly horrible uh start to the 2526 season and um that’s the big takeaway from that Tampa loss is one that we’ve been circling for about two weeks now that uh the Capitals are doing a lot right you know They’re they’re scoring pretty well, five on five, but they’re not finishing. And uh I guess what I would say is what makes this so frustrating frustrating is you take a look at a team like Tampa, and I mean really look at it. Uh and Capitals, um they’re forchecking. They’re generating looks, they’re doing the work. Um but when it comes to actually putting the puck in the back of the net, uh when it comes to that moment of finish, it’s just not there. And um I think that to a certain extent it’s uh projecting failure, you know, like I’ve talked about when you see the struggle on the power play that, you know, we can’t do it, we can’t do it, and they’ll find this oneoff where they do score a power play goal, but then it’s just back to square one again that I don’t think we can spend too much time high-fiving each other if you pick up a win against the Blues when it has been horrible. uh other than that and uh you can say the chances are there so many times before it starts sounding like an excuse and uh we’ve heard all the excuses this year, haven’t we? That uh you know it was a backto back and that’s rough and you know the Capitals are struggling because they play way more backtobacks than any other team in the league. And there’s some truth to that. But I mean what what about the game against the Lightning where the excuses start to run out? Uh but at the end of the day, that is where we’re at. Uh the Caps are basically, if you take a look at it, 500 in the standings. Uh but when you look under the hood, they’re playing like a team that should probably be a couple wins better. Again, circle back to not finishing. Uh they’ve lost six of their last seven, but most of those losses, one goal right there, right on the edge. Uh you just have to have that instinct to close out these games. Um, and I think that, you know, at some point it’ll happen. In the second segment, I’ll talk about Pier Luke Dubois’s impact. But, uh, this team is going to have to find a way to win without him. And, uh, you add that in with the special teams problem, and let’s just call it what it is. The power play is hurting this team. The penalty kill is hurting this team. And, uh, just taking a look at numbers alone, the power play is down near the bottom of the league. and the PK is now in the low 70s. Um, and you know, talking about just NHL big picture, you can’t win games that way. Not consistently anyway. So, in a threeon two game, especially, excuse me, in a 3 to2 game, special teams are the difference. Um, if you would have killed off a penalty, if you would have converted on a power play opportunity, you would have very well won the game. You know, it’s simple things here. It’s not fancy. It’s not complicated. It’s simply math. And um you know, just talking about the most recent game here is was another one that I’m like, well, maybe the Caps can win this one. The Caps tie it up in the second. They’ve got the juice. They’re building momentum. And the third period starts and everything tightens. Uh but Tampa’s opportunistic. They always have been. They’re sitting there waiting for you to make one mistake and capitalize on it. And the Capitals gave them one. neutral zone bobble lost coverage on the rush and boom, it’s in your net and you’re already talking about, well, maybe we can win the next one. And uh that’s why these takeaways matter. If the team was getting blown out, it’s easy to diagnose, you know, that you need to make a big trade or you need to shuffle things up, but these are generally speaking, you know, save the Ottawa game, pretty close games. Um, but that’s the troubling part. That’s what’s not happening. The Caps are skating uh with every opponent. They’re often better five on five. They’re generating the high uh expected goals, but they’re not converting. Um and they can’t finish at key moments. You know, when it was a difference between, you know, a power play or, you know, making excuses that, you know, this was a penalty that was called on the Caps. Uh at the end of the day, they are excuses and uh their special teams are giving up too much and getting too little back. Um, and it’s something, you know, Spencer Carberry said he’s willing to take the grief on it if the power play is not humming along. And what do you know, it is not doing that. So, that’s why this feels maddening because this fix isn’t overhaul the entire system. Uh, it’s the small things. Uh, simplify the power play, stop forcing passes through sticks, and get more bodies to the net instead of hanging around around the perimeter. Um, you know, if you could post up in front of the net minder in this last game, Vaselpski, that you could screen him, right? That you could block it so he can’t see the goal or you could deflect it in the back of the net. Um, and on the PK, play tighter, get sticks in lanes, stop giving up the cross seams. Uh, these are correctable issues, but they’ve got to be corrected soon. Um, again, the Thanksgiving break is looming and that is one of the measuring sticks that spoke about all the time where your team’s at at the Thanksgiving break oftentimes can determine where you finish the season. Um, because these one lo these one goal losses are stacking up fast and we play well, but lost doesn’t move you in the standings. Not November, not in March, not ever. Uh, they’ve got to find a way to clean it up. They’ve got to find a way to finish and Lord knows to circle back. The power play needs to be better. The PK needs to be better and uh they need some sort of jump start. We’ve seen Spencer Carberry change things around. You’ve seen La Pierre sort of kind of moved around here. You saw games before where they put Oie on the third line for for a while. It’s not for a lack of trying, but at the end of the day, I think that Spencer Carberry has run out of options uh for what he has on this roster. All right, so coming up here after the break, we’ll talk about pure Luke Dubois’s impact and how he will be missing a substantial amount of time. How much time will he be missing and ultimately what does he mean to this team? I’ll discuss straight ahead. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast, easy, just use Indeed? When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other sites. Indeed sponsor jobs puts your post at the top of the page and helps you find the right candidates fast. Now listen, I’m involved a bit in the HR, the hiring and firing and people’s availabilities and turning in paper applications. It can be so frustrating. That is why I love Indeed and why I think you will as well. Now you can speed up your hiring process with a $75 sponsored job credit. Just go to indeed.com/lockton right now and support our show by saying you heard about it on the Locked Capitals podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring indeed is all you need. All right, welcome back into this edition of Locked On Capitals, part of the Locked On Network, your team every day and the number one sports podcasting network. You can find me on Twitter, it’s dancaps28. You can find the show on Twitter, it’s locked on caps. So, talking about pure Luke Dubois impact, I think we know it’s real. Uh, second line center, you know, you could put anybody in there. You can put Conor Mcichael, you could put Hendricks Lapierre, heck, you could put Nick Dow in there, but I don’t think you’re going to see the success on that second line. Um, the same way that we have seen with Pier Luke Dubois. And the bad news today is that the Capitals announced that pure Luke Dubois will miss 3 to four months after undergoing surgery to address injuries to his abdominal and adductor muscles. Uh so we’re talking what all the way out into February, March, uh possibly. So a line share of the season. and you take a look at it, I think it be has become abundantly clear that Chris Patrick needs to go out and make a trade, you know, and I hear people say we got internal options and we’ve tried internal options. How many more games do we want to lose uh because of this and it’s not all pure Luke Dubois. I get that. Um I think that you know a good chunk of these games, even if he was in there, they may have lost, but they need a jump start. They need a spark plug. um whether pure Luke Dubois was here or not, it’s just not translating and pushing all your chips in that the Capitals were really good last year, winning the Metro, winning the Eastern Conference. You’re going to take that to the bank and it’s going to come back in sufficient funds. In a league of what have you done for me lately, the Capitals have not done a lot as far as what is most important, wins and losses. they’ve lost way too many games. Um, in a lot of ways proving some of the insiders right that hey, we told you this team uh wasn’t going to be as good as many people thought. So, let’s dive into uh Pure Luke Dubois and how his injury has exposed uh the middle six and it’s showing up all over the ice here. And the biggest takeaway is this. Losing Pure Luke Dubois has straight up exposed how thin the caps are in the middle six. Um, and you know, you take a look at it. Stro knocks it out of the park. Doubt on the fourth line. I think a bit of a question mark at the third line. You know, we’ve seen Lapier, we’ve seen sort of, we’ve seen different mixing and matching here. But I think that, you know, with a question mark on the third line, you at least need stability on the second line and the Caps are lacking that. And you can see it every game since he went down, it’s not just missing a guy, it’s missing the type of guy that he is. What kind of player is he? a stabilizer, a play driver, a matchup neutralizer, and a minutes eater. And when you don’t have that player in the lineup, everything starts to wobble. Uh it is that ripple down effect that he’s out of the lineup, so you got to move players around. And I think the lines have struggled with chemistry and consistency. And Carberry’s basically running a nightly blender on lines two and three um to see if he can get any chemistry. Lapierre bounced around sort of getting center reps to see how he can handle it. Different wingers switching sides, different roles being uh swapped midame and I wonder how much more they’re going to mess with it to just understand and throw your hands in the air like it’s not working than to dig a little bit deeper. I know that he didn’t want to try Alexe Protus as a center, but he has a history. I know that Pro doesn’t really want to do that. his younger brother, Ilia Prous, uh, has center experience as well. I wonder if they’re going to try that first, uh, before they go out and try to make a trade. If you’re asking me, it’s still too much of an unproven commodity. The Capitals have lost too much ground. I would go out and try to make a trade. I mean, unless we’re just waving the white flag on the 2526 season already, and I don’t think that’s the case. Uh, and the chemistry, like I said, between the lines is just lacking. And you saw it again the game against Tampa. Uh first stretches the caps look organized. They looked fast. They looked engaged. But then suddenly a line gets caught too deep. A middle six pairing misses a coverage in transition and the wheel starts to wobble and falls off. You know, a puck doesn’t get out of the zone clean and that’s where the breakdowns come from. And uh like I said, it’s a bit of a a head game at this point. I think that the Capitals are scratching their head thinking to themselves, how do we fix this? you know, and I know that Spencer Carbury can do it. You know, uh, a Jack Adams winner last year, right? That, uh, he knows what he’s doing. Again, I just think that he has limited assets and he’s doing the best that he can with what he has. And, uh, what was that? um that Hegel goal classic breakdown in that if you saw the game from a group that doesn’t uh have established chemistry. One guy bites, one guy hesitates, one guy over skates the puck and everything collapses for a half second there and it’s just too much and that’s all Tampa needs. And um you know when Dubois is out the second and third lines have to play minutes they’re not built for. And when that happens, your defensive structure starts getting stretched. And um that’s why I circle back to I think that a trade is needed. I don’t think that they want to flounder and flail anymore. That um and I don’t know the player, right? There’s a lot of options. There’s a lot of trade options. A a a good option, an upgrade. I don’t want a guy that, you know, showed flashes for a couple seasons and then disappeared. We need a true upgrade. And I’m saying this, like I said, regardless if pure Luke Dubois is in or out of the lineup. Um, but you know, it’s it’s the lines getting overworked. It’s the top line getting overworked. Uh, depth lines getting mismatched. The defense, he’s more aggressive for checks. The PK gets more pressure. You know, you got guys like Ethan Franken there, which, you know, not a knock on him, but, you know, it’s a depth move at the end of the day. And it’s all connected. You know, this is why this takeaway is so important. Carberry said himself that finding the right combinations in the middle six has been a real challenge. Well, duh. We’ve seen that. And honestly, watching it that tracks with what he’s saying. Um, and you know, you take a look at it, what changed, right? You lost Radish, you lost Mia. Um, you didn’t lose anyone that I perceive was a true difference maker, but I think the Capitals were so fixated on the Gretzky chase. I, you know, I’m trying to draw a conclusion. I’m trying to explain it. Otherwise, it’s pretty unexplainable. Uh but the first fix is obvious and it’s not going to be an easy one is that when Dubois comes back, the bad news that we find out today, however, is he’s going to be out for 3 to four months. That’s not going to work. Um but, you know, either they ride out this uh unsustainable uh lineup and hope someone emerges or they find external help to stabilize the lineup lineup. That’s what they have to do. I mean, make no mistake about it that um you know, you might get a good game or two out of Mcichael, you might get a good game or two out of Lapier, sort of, but not enough to win big picture. Not enough to to make it to the playoffs in 2526, to be honest with you. And I know that, you know, a lot of people are glass half full, saying they’re going to figure it out, and I hope they do. Um, but, you know, like I’ve quoted, 247 Capitals Penguins, don’t judge a team at their worst. Conversely, don’t judge them when they’re best. Loosely phrased there. Um, but how much time, right? That um, you know, if you waste too much time, you’re going to be in the cellar and it’s going to be too late. Your team does not want to be out of it by the Thanksgiving break. The Capitals do not want to be out of it by the Thanksgiving break. So, things that need to get cleaned up in a hurry uh, before the Capitals are, as a matter of fact, already out of it. All right, so coming up here after the break, we’ll talk about Logan Thompson’s impact and why he can’t save this team. He can keep pucks out of the back of the net or do his best, but he can’t score goals. How does this team win big picture and what does LT mean to this team? I’ll discuss straight ahead. The NBA is back and there’s no better place to get in on the action than FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. Even if you miss the start of the game or want to ride the hot hand, FanDuel has live bets on everything from who will score next to fourth quarter comebacks. Plus, you can even combine your live bets into a same game parlay for a shot at a bigger payout. It keeps every game exciting, especially when your team is making a push. Uh so whether you’re a Wizards fan or any fan of an NBA team, open up the FanDuel app, put down some money. All of a sudden, that game got that much more exciting. And right now, FanDuel is giving new customers $300 in bonus bets when your first $5 bet wins. So head to fanduel.com to sign up and play your game with FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. All right, welcome back into this edition of Locked On Capitals, part of the Locked On Network, your team every day. I want to thank you for making Locked On your number one sports network. The best way that you can help grow this show, Locked on Capitals, is to subscribe to it on YouTube, like the videos, comment anything down below, and thank you to all the everydayers that are joining me on the Locked On Capitals Insiders Capitals News texted you directly to your phone. You can text me back. There is more information in the show notes. So, in the last segment, uh, segment three of today’s show, we’re talking about Logan Thompson and, um, you know, save this last game, he’s kept the Capitals right in there. Lowscoring affairs that it’s been a bit since he has given up, uh, three goals, but that is the position that we’re in and ultimately why he cannot, you know, save the season. He can do what he can do, uh, but he needs a little help here. So, Logan Thompson, um, even though the Capitals have struggled, has been unreal. uh just rock solid for weeks and uh even in the games that they lose more recently here against Tampa, the one uh where his quality start streak ended, he was still excellent. He still gave the Caps every chance to win the game. He made big saves. He tracked pucks cleanly. He bounced back after screens. And he stayed composed even after the team in front of him got a bit scrambly. And uh if he isn’t playing at this level, no, I’m just going to say it. The Caps are losing games by three or four goals, not by one. And then all of a sudden, the problems I had talked about in segment one and two um are just even part of a bigger problem. Uh but he’s doing it. He’s keeping the Capitals afloat. If they can find their goal scoring, uh they can win games. And he knows it. The guy knows it. But and this is important. He cannot bandage it together for this year’s team. You can’t go into every night saying, “Hey, Logan, we need you to stop 96% of shots or or we can’t win.” That’s not fair to him. And you know, I think historically the Capitals have played more confidently in front of Logan Thompson than they have Charlie Lingren. Uh even though Charlie Lingren usually gets the game number two of a backto-back, so that’s a bit unfair to him as well. But, you know, that’s the thing, you know, uh to put unrealistic expectations on your net minder. Um, in this case, Logan Thompson isn’t fair, and that’s not how this work. He needs support. Uh, he needs run support. He needs cleaner breakouts. Uh, he needs fewer turnovers right in front of him. And, uh, he needs the PK to stop giving up back door tipins, right? That the defense um, also has to do their best to keep, uh, the the opponent to the outside to make those shots that much more difficult. Um, but even those even some of those high danger chances, he’s standing on his head and making big saves. He’s giving you number one goalie performances night after night that say it was Chucky or say it was a less than that. Like I said, the Capitals would have lost by bigger or excuse me, lost by larger margins. Um, now the rest of the team has to meet him halfway. the defense needs to button it up to avoid those back door tip-ins and the Capitals just need to score goals, five on five power play, all of those things. Uh because if the offense can give him the team a goal a night, actual support goals, not lucky bounces, not fluky ones, then Thompson turns into an absolute difference maker, um not a life raft. And that, like I said, that’s not fair to him that um and I think that we know that, right? that uh uh we need goal scoring and you know you take a look at puck possession numbers the Capitals are pretty good but it’s the little things that turn into the big things when you’re given your opportunity not finishing it’s not scoring on the power play it’s the things that I rehash every episode because why they’re the same problems game after game um goalies can lift you but they can’t carry a flawed lineup forever uh they can win one for you here or there uh but at the end of the day your team needs to score and uh I know the Capitals did get some production in this game. They did put up two goals, but it’s not enough. And this team knows how to do it. Again, I I think that to a a certain extent, a large extent rather, that they’re caught up in uh their own head. Uh he’s done what he can do to help win these games. Now, it’s up uh to the rest of the roster to repay the favor. And um ultimately, how do they do that? So, that’s the position that the Capitals are in. Uh, like I said, if it wasn’t Logan Thompson, the Capitals would really be free falling right now. That it’s a luxury. Uh, that they have a really excellent number one. Um, but in that same breath that Charlie Lingren, big picture, I think is better than his numbers would indicate. Again, I’ve never thought that he tracked as an elite level net minder. Charlie Lingren that is, but still better um than most uh especially better than most teams backups around the league. So um we need to do you know whether it’s Logan Thompson or Charlie Lingren a favor by winning these close games, right? That uh it’s unfair to say, “Hey, we’re not going to score we’re going to score one goal and that’s going to be enough because it’s not fair to them.” And you know, it’s all the things that that aren’t getting fixed to wrap up this show. uh talking about the Caps not finishing in the first segment, PLLD’s impact in the second, and Logan Thompson can’t save the Caps that it’s the same thing that we keep harping on and you know, the cries out there um to change the power play and you know, and I hear it on social media, we need to get Ovetchkin and Carlson off the power play so much that we need to mix things up. And then you have Spencer Carberry saying, “Yeah, I hear that, but you know, these guys have a solid track record and I’m going to take the blame if they don’t play well.” Well, I hope he’s prepared to take some of the blame because they’re not converting. And um you know, I think the biggest thing is he doesn’t want to teach other players, you know, how to play the power play as well because that might have limited returns as well. Uh suffices to say, this team in a lot of ways, uh other than net minding is a big mess. And unfortunately, I don’t think that the current roster as is constructed to overcome these insufficiencies, right? that I think that Chris Patrick is going to have to do the thing that he should should have done um last summer. And you take a look at Jack Rosavic, you know, a guy that they were kicking the tires on is actually playing rather well. Couldn’t the Capitals have used him, right? Or Nikolai Eers that they should have done something even if it meant giving up a bigger name player to fix this team. Unless we’re just kicking the can down the road going, “Hey, this is the last year of Ovuchkin and then we’ll get serious.” Uh, I don’t want this team to be viewed as a one-off, that they got lucky last season, that this team has some resiliency, that they can fix what’s wrong so they can get back into the business of winning hockey games. Listen, once again, I want to thank you for joining me on this edition of Locked On Capitals, your only daily year- round podcast covering the Capitals. And I want to thank all of you that listen on the audio side and watch this on YouTube. You are what makes this show successful. When you’re done here, head on over to Locked on NHL for your second listen. The new Locked On NHL game night every game, every night until a Stanley Cup champion is crowned. Get local analysis on a national scale. Find NHL Game Night on Locked on NHL on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, once again, I want to thank you for joining me on this edition of Locked On Capitals, part of the Locked On Network. It is your team every day. My name is Dan Holy and I’ll talk to you again next time.

Washington Capitals’ finishing woes sink playoff hopes—can key trades ignite a turnaround? Pierre-Luc Dubois faces a lengthy absence, special teams falter, and frustration mounts as the team drops another close contest to the Tampa Bay Lightning.

DAN HOLMI breaks down the Capitals’ persistent power play and penalty kill struggles, Pierre-Luc Dubois’ three-to-four-month injury, and what it means for the fragile middle six. The episode spotlights Logan Thompson’s stellar goaltending as the lone bright spot in an otherwise lackluster start to the 2526 NHL season, raising tough questions about roster construction and Chris Patrick’s urgent need for impact trades. Is head coach Spencer Carbery out of answers, or can Washington reset before the Thanksgiving break spells doom for their playoff push?

Don’t miss the sharp analysis of the challenges facing the Washington Capitals and the moves they must make to bounce back.

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