Written by Barry Svrluga at Washington Post.com
It doesn’t take long at all to lose a playoff hockey game, which is obvious and perplexing at the same time. It takes 60 minutes to win one — at least — and we can all agree on that. But somehow, they can be lost in a single shift or a matter of seconds, in the amount of time it takes to read this paragraph.
The Washington Capitals will wake up Friday morning and rue the third-period goal from Nick Bonino, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ third-line center who was last seen finishing the Capitals off in overtime of Game 6 last May, beginning summer in Washington a month early. On Thursday, in the opener of their second-round series at Verizon Center, it was somehow Bonino on the breakaway, Bonino outracing Washington defenseman Brooks Orpik to free himself for the shot, Bonino beating Braden Holtby to give Pittsburgh a 3-2 victory.
That’s the game-winner for Pittsburgh, and it can’t be disputed. But was it the game-loser for the Caps?
Washington trails in the nascent stages of this series not solely because of that goal. It trails because when it returned to the ice after the first intermission of a scoreless, feel-each-other-out game, it did so without its full faculties. It took just 12 seconds for one Pittsburgh goal, another 52 seconds for the next, and — boom! — previously pulsing Verizon Center was quiet, and the Penguins had a 2-0 lead.
“It wasn’t a strong start from us,” said veteran center Nicklas Backstrom, who couldn’t connect on a pass with defenseman Matt Niskanen on the first shift of the period. “We gave them two goals there — quickly. That’s not good enough.”
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