"With a chance to sweep a four-game homestand and head out on the road riding a wave of success, the Washington Capitals instead were knocked backwards by the second-worst team in the Eastern Conference.

Washington looked flat as players failed to win battles for the puck and coughed it uprepeatedly against the New York Islanders, who zipped around the ice despite playing in the second of back-to-back nights. The Capitals' decidedly uninspired play would elicit boos from the crowd at Verizon Center on Tuesday night and later send fans streaming toward the exits early as their team fell, 3-0, to the lowly Islanders."