After being shutout at home Tuesday against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Capitals were looking for some instant offense. Unfortunately, they were lucky to get any offense at all.
Washington is still looking for a goal as they trail the Florida Panthers 1-0 after 20 minutes.
The Capitals' power play, 7 for 64 in their last 17 games entering Saturday, failed on an early attempt and struggled to find any sort of offensive momentum after several early offsides calls.
The Panthers took advantage of the Capitals' lackadaisical play to score the game's first goal on the game's first shot. A defensive breakdown in the defensive zone gave David Booth an open path to Dmitry Kulikov in the slot. Kulikov drew Semyon Varlamov out of the crease and found Mike Santorelli open in the crease for the tic-tac-toe goal at 3:49.
It took the Caps 13:15 to finally get a shot in the offensive zone; the first shot of the game came from a Jason Chimera clearing attempt that happened to end up on net. The Capitals ended up with five shots on net to the Panthers' six.