Carolina got its Stanley Cup rings a few days before this season started. Two games later, the team wearing them looks like it forgot how to play defense, and I'm not buying that this is just a hangover.
Here are the facts. Washington, playing its first game of the year, walked into Carolina and won 5-2. Alex Tuch, traded in after five seasons in Buffalo, scored twice in his Capitals debut. Alex Ovechkin, 41 and starting his 22nd NHL season, picked up an assist on the opening goal. Cole Hutson, Jakob Chychrun and Ryan Leonard also scored. Carolina got goals from Sebastian Aho and Logan Stankoven but got outplayed for stretches and finished the night 0-1-1 through two games, having also lost its opener in overtime to Florida. Late in the third period, Charles-Alexis Legault took a ten-minute misconduct, and the whistles went both ways with roughing minors on Aho and Washington's Justin Sourdif. Sloppy, undisciplined hockey for a team that's supposed to be the defending champion in week one.
The hangover theory says the legs come back once the grind sets in. Fine. Teams do stumble out of long championship runs. But hangovers don't explain a decision the front office made on purpose. Seth Jarvis, who led this team in scoring last season, is out recovering from shoulder surgery and isn't projected back until sometime between late October and December. That's a real hole up front. Instead of filling it, Carolina sent Bradly Nadeau, a legitimate scoring prospect who'd been pushing for a roster spot, back down to the AHL. They chose to run this lineup light at forward while their top goal-scorer was already out. That's a staffing choice, made with Jarvis's absence already known.
Carolina did play better as the game wore on. The real test comes later, in games that count more than a Friday loss to a team that hadn't played a single game yet. One result off a roster that just won it all in June doesn't mean the wheels are off. But "we'll see how we look against Philadelphia" only means Carolina hasn't paid for the Nadeau call yet.
Washington walked in with nothing on the record and got a two-goal debut from a guy who wasn't even on the roster a year ago. That was enough offense to make the champs look stretched. Carolina had a winger sitting in Chicago who wanted the job. The next time this team's offense goes quiet with Jarvis still out, nobody should call it fatigue. It's a gap the organization built on its own and refused to close.
