Washington tried to answer with fights, but only looked more rattled
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Bruce Raymond
Apr 5, 2026 (8:55 PM)
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Photo credit: Screenshot
Jakob Chychrun answered under Spencer Carbery, and the Capitals still came out looking flat after losing the first of two straight fights.
Chychrun stepped in after Will Cuylle caught Ryan Leonard. That part made sense. The problem came right after, when the response changed nothing for Washington.
Cuylle won the exchange, and the Capitals did not get the bench lift they were chasing. The moment passed, and the same flat mood stayed in the game.
Then Washington went back to the same well. Brandon Duhaime dropped the gloves with Tye Kartye, and that one went the wrong way too.
That is the part that sticks. One lost fight can still jolt a room. Two straight losses in that department usually do the opposite.
It leaves a team looking emotional without looking dangerous. And that is not the kind of message a club wants to send in the middle of a tense night.
The response was there, the spark was not
Chychrun had the cleanest reason to react. Leonard took the hit, and veterans are expected to answer when a young player gets run.
That part of the code still matters. A rookie notices who steps in for him, especially when the temperature jumps and the game starts to tilt.
Duhaime's fight felt different. That one looked more like Washington trying to force energy into the night after the first answer failed to move anything.
Kartye winning that exchange only made the sequence look worse. Now the Capitals were down two fights and still searching for any real push in the run of play.
That is why the optics turn rough on a bench. When a team reaches for emotion twice and still cannot change the feel of the game, the frustration starts to show.
Carbery's group needed cleaner shifts, stronger puck support, and more bite through the middle of the ice. It did not need two losing scraps to tell the same story.
There is still value in standing up for a teammate. No one inside that room is going to knock Chychrun for answering after Leonard got hit.
But losing two fights in a row is not much of a spark. If anything, it underlined a harder truth for Washington: the Capitals looked rattled, and the push never came with it.
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