\u201cIt\u2019s not good enough to just get in; there\u2019s other teams that are doing that every year,\u201d Tage Thompson said. \u201c\u2026 We want to do something special, and if we\u2019re playing like that, we\u2019re not going to.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the great pregame news off the ice, things started horribly on it. Failed clears, missed coverages and some poorly placed rebounds allowed the Capitals to take a 3-0 lead just six minutes in. As a wake-up call, coach Lindy Ruff pulled starting goalie Alex Lyon for Colten Ellis, who hadn\u2019t seen game action since Feb. 3.<\/p>\n
The change in net seemed to work, at first.\u00a0Dahlin scored his 18th goal just 38 seconds later to stop the bleeding, and the Sabres continued pressuring in the Washington zone. Beck Malenstyn scored on a rebound to make it 3-2.<\/p>\n
But the deficit grew to two goals again early in the second. The Sabres couldn\u2019t cash in on an odd-man rush during 4-on-4 play, then Washington\u2019s Aliaksei Protas took it the other way and scored.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou try to force stuff when you\u2019re trying to come back in games,\u201d Dahlin said. \u201cIt\u2019s never a good thing to be down three that early. I think everything starts there. We can\u2019t let that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s not good enough to just get in; there\u2019s other teams that are doing that every year,\u201d Tage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5114],"tags":[191,5,4,190,109,5222],"class_list":{"0":"post-541614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-capitals","8":"tag-capitals","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-washington","12":"tag-washington-capitals","13":"tag-washingtoncapitals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116350581888423747","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}