After winning the first two games at home, the Washington Capitals and Carolina Hurricanes moved down to Raleigh with the Caps up 2-0 in this best-of-7 series. After a 10-year drought without playoff hockey in the Carolinas, the crowd at PNC Arena at Raleigh was expected to be loud. Well, it was just that and then some.
After sweeping the regular season series from Carolina 4-0 and winning these first two playoff games in DC, momentum was expected to be in the Caps favor shifting to another location, due to their extensive history of playoff experience. It looked like the complete opposite of that. Game 3 was absolutely dominated by the Hurricanes by a 5-0 shutout led by two goals apiece from third year player Warren Foegele and veteran Dougie Hamilton, along with a very underwhelming 18 shots by the Caps, in which all of them were saved by goalie Petr Mrazek.
After Game 3, the Caps had two days off between games. The first day off, they didn't even hit the ice, which was a good thing for the team to recharge their batteries for a day before hitting the ice for practice the next day in preparation for Game 4.
Speaking of Game 4, the Capitals played a lot better than Game 3, but still struggled a little bit. The aforementioned Warren Foegele scored only 17 seconds into the entire game, then Caps Captain Alex Ovechkin scored to tie it in the second and then at the end of the second period, Carolina took the lead and never looked back, winning 2-1 and evened the series 2-2 going back to DC. It also got even worse for the Caps, as star right winger TJ Oshie broke his collarbone in the 3rd period of Game 4 and will miss the remainder of the playoffs.
Stay tuned for a recap of Game 5.
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