WASHINGTON _ Blues coach Ken Hitchcock joked recently that his habitually slow-starting team could use an early Christmas present of alarm clocks. So for those who may be out shopping on Friday, if you're looking for something for your favorite Blue, consider that a suggestion.
The Blues have sorted out a lot of problems in the past two weeks, but the ability to bring their best from the initial puck drop remains an issue. Possibly fatigued by their second game in as many nights and an arrival in the nation's capital in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, the Blues dug a hole, as much in their physical bank account as on the scoreboard, in the first period and lost to the Capitals 4-3 at the Verizon Center.
Alex Ovechkin continued to thrive playing the Blues. He recorded his second hat trick in the past two games with the Blues and he has eight goals in his past four games against them. It was 16th career hat trick and ran his career goal total to 537 in the win. It was almost an all-Russian night: Evgeny Kuznetsov had the other goal for the Capitals and Vladimir Tarasenko scored two for the Blues. The rest of the world had just one goal, Alex Pietrangelo's power-play goal with 1:15 to play.
The loss snapped the Blues' four-game win streak, but after getting the win on Tuesday night at Boston, this trip looked a lot better than the previous one, where they were outscored 11-5. The Blues are now home for their next five games, where they are 8-1-2 and not on the road again until Dec. 8.
The Blues would have been in real trouble without an outstanding game in goal by backup Carter Hutton, who in his first start since Nov. 10 was called on to a lot of work early on and kept the team in the game but, like a lot of goalies, couldn't stop Ovechkin.
The Blues have been outscored only 12-10 in the first period this season coming into the game, but they're scoring half the goals in the first period as they do in either of the others. It was the fifth time in the past six games the Blues have given up the first goal, and as well as the Blues have done on wearing teams down and outdistancing them in the third, it's not a way that maximizes a team's chances of winning.
On this night, the Blues never caught up and they allowed a third-period goal for the first time in five games.
The first period saw six penalties, four on the Blues, including an old standby, the too-many-men-on-the-ice call, and two on the Capitals. That turned the game into a battle of special teams, with 6:40 of power-play time total. The Blues had to kill off 23 seconds of five-on-three and they remained perfect in that department.
The Blues killed the first three with help from some nice play in goal by Hutton, but on the fourth Blues penalty, a slash on Kyle Brodziak, the Capitals finally scored. Running a play the Blues had already seen several times, Kuznetsov near the net fed Ovechkin near the left dot and his quick wrist shot found the top right corner for his 10th goal of the season.
The Blues didn't get much done in their two power plays, one of which lasted just five seconds before David Perron was called for interference. The penalties certainly messed up the Blues' ice time; with so much special teams time, Nail Yakupov played just two shifts for 1:21 in the period and Ryan Reaves had just four shifts for 2:28.
But if the Blues were dragging, all that penalty killing was not something they needed. Hitchcock had success by rebuilding his lines between the first and second period on Tuesday and he did it again on Wednesday, going back to what he had at the start of Tuesday's game. This time, it didn't change things.
Washington extended the lead to 2-0 midway through the second period on a slapshot by a surprisingly open Ovechkin from the top of the right circle. The Blues got that goal back quickly, though, as Tarasenko put in his own rebound 36 seconds later. He took the first shot as he cut in front of the crease and he put the rebound in from a sharp ankle, avoiding a sliding Karl Alzner. It was Tarasenko's third goal in six games and he has 12 points in his past 10 games and has scored in nine of the 10 games. But the Blues had precious little of the puck, with only 10 shots on goal in the first two periods.
Meanwhile, Hutton was keeping the Blues in the game with some impressive saves, including one where he kicked his left pad high to block a shot by Andre Burakovsky 6 minutes into the second.
Washington gave itself some breathing room in the third period when Kuznetsov finished off a break and then Ovechkin completed his hat trick to finish it off. From a faceoff in the Washington end, Ovechkin got the puck, skated it the length of the ice, shooting over a sliding Jay Bouwmeester from the circle to Hutton's right to score.
Pietrangelo got the Blues a late goal when he put in a rebound of a Paul Stastny shot with 75 seconds to play. Tarasenko put in a loose puck with 28.4 seconds left to pull within one but the Blues barely had possession in the dying seconds.
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