Three things go wrong for Utah Hockey Club after a loss to Ovechkin's Caps

Utah Hockey Club ended with a 6-2 loss to the Washington Capitals at Delta Center on Monday night. Jack McBain and Nick Bjugstad scored for Utah, but it wasn't nearly enough to keep the team afloat for 60 minutes.

Here are three things going wrong for Utah after dropping its fifth game this month.

The production of the power games has come to a standstill

Utah Hockey Club has scored one power-play goal in its past six games and went 0-for-7 on the man advantage against the Capitals.

Officially it's a problem.

Play after play, Utah is put in positions to either extend a lead or get itself back in contention on the power play, and it has rarely been able to capitalize on those moments this season. Same story Monday.

Utah had four power plays in the first period, including more than 30 seconds of 5-on-3, and couldn't capitalize on them. Having the ability to make it a one-goal game on home ice before the second period is almost a must-score situation.

Despite Dylan Guenther hitting the crossbar and Michael Kesselring tapping the post on the power play, Utah gave Washington room to quickly shift the ice, and it did.

We have to be much better. It's easy to sit here and say we hit the crossbeam, but that's no excuse. We have to find a way to put the puck in the back of the net, forward Lawson Crouse said. That's not good enough. Maybe you plug the game in and it's a different story.

The Capitals scored two goals in 10 seconds to take a 2-1 lead by 11:05 of the period. The first came from Dylan Strome, who took advantage of a Utah turnover and rammed the puck past Connor Ingram on the wraparound. Nic Dowd followed it up with a goal off a 2-on-1 rush the next shift.

Alex Ovechkin, who is currently chasing Wayne Gretzky's record of 894 goals, scored two more against Utah to move him 27 away from the title. Washington's captain first released a snap to make it 3-1 at the 11:05 mark of the opening frame. He then shot one home on the power play from his weak-side office, putting the Capitals up 4-1 at 5:38 of the second.

Defender Ian Cole said the team feels the weight of the world on our shoulders when things go wrong in a match.

I'd like to think it's because guys care a lot. The guys really care, they want to turn this corner, they want to be a team that can win consistently and we're not quite there yet, Cole said. I think we have a tendency that when things start to fail, they become big.

Utah got the power play twice more in the middle frame and once in the third, but couldn't convert. Utah's power play percentage has fallen to 28th in the league (out of 32 teams) at 13.7%.

Utah needs more from its veteran players

It's not for a lack of effort, but the offensive production from Utah's top, more experienced forwards has been lacking and that's costing the team wins.

Utah has seen strong success from players like Bjugstad, who scored three goals in three games, and McBain, who scored two goals in three games, but the consistency from the forwards as a whole has not been there.

Secondary scores are important to any winning team, but it means less if you don't get primary output either. It's not often that Utah gets the game-changing, momentum-shifting goal it needs to run away with a game.

Nick Schmaltz, a first-line winger on a $5.85 million AAV deal, has scored zero goals in 18 games, marking the worst start to a season of his career. Schmaltz scored the third-most goals on the team last year with 22. While the forward has 13 assists at Utah, that hasn't been enough. Schmaltz is on the first power player unit and is averaging 18:10 ice time per night. That should result in scoring so Utah can get better.

Right now we can't get enough of anyone. I think we got possession, shots, things like that. But we're not done yet. We miss the net on many of our A opportunities, said head coach Andr Tourigny. We must finish, we must take the last action that will make a difference.

Crouse similarly scored the team's second-most goals last season with 23 and now has just four points (three goals, one assist) in 18 games. The forward is on the second power play unit with Barrett Hayton, who has not scored since October 30. Captain Clayton Keller also hasn't scored since October 30.

This fight does not come without responsibility for Utah. The players know things have to change.

Everyone must hold themselves accountable. “I hold myself accountable, I have to be better,” Crouse said.

It's no secret: I've been having trouble finding the score sheet lately. Personally, I just try to keep out of my head about it. Once you get in your head, it's not good. When you go through these kinds of problems and setbacks, you have to find ways to do something different to help the team win.

The goaltending has not been consistent

Connor Ingram returned to the Utah net on Monday night after Karel Vejmelka played the last two games and played well.

While some of the Capitals numbers were off Utah turnovers and losses in coverage, Ingram allowed four goals on 13 shots, pulling him early in the second period. Vejmelka came in and made nine saves on 11 shots to end the game.

At that point we had to try to get some momentum back and spark something, Tourigny said of pulling Ingram. We thought this was the right decision.

Tourigny said Monday morning that Ingram was the team's starter coming out of training camp and that he didn't want to keep the No. 1 goaltender out for more than a week. However, it's not training camp anymore and Ingram hasn't proven to be as quiet as he was last season. After all, Josh Doan was a third-line winger who left training camp and now he's playing in the AHL. Things change.

Utah's defense must undoubtedly bear some of the blame for the high number of goals the team allows per game, but it starts with stability in net.

I think we would put ourselves in a better position if we just worried about what our responsibility was, winning our team or winning the period, instead of trying to win the game in one shift, Cole said.

Ingram has averaged a 3.61 goals and .871 save percentage in thirteen games this season. Vejmelka has a GAA of 2.58 and an SV% of 0.915.

That's not to say Vejmelka is the answer to Brandon Duhaime and Aliaksei Protas scoring against him in the third period to take the game to its final 6-2 scoreline, but perhaps a revised look at the goaltender rotation. In the modern NHL, sometimes you just have to play the hot hand.