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NEW YORK — This entire series for the Washington Capitals — this absolute slog up an incline as steep as the Empire State Building — is not at the feet of Alex Ovechkin. Yet here, in the second period of a game in which the Caps were somehow still competing, came the puck to Ovechkin’s feet as he stood along the boards at his own blue line, the cacophony of Madison Square Garden all around him.

“It was kind of a weird bounce,” Ovechkin said later Tuesday night.

The Capitals were on the power play, looking for the equalizer in Game 2 of this first-round Stanley Cup playoff series against the New York Rangers. Instead, Mika Zibanejad wrestled the puck away. Here came the Rangers, burying a chance they had no business having.

“Lucky bounce,” Ovechkin said. “You know, I have to play safer. And you know — especially in that moment.”

Safe has never been Ovechkin’s style. But K’Andre Miller’s ensuing shorthanded goal provided the difference <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/04/23/rangers-capitals-stanley-cup-playoffs-game-2/" target=_blank>in the Rangers’ 4-3 victory</a> that put them up two games, and it served as a reminder of so many of the keys to this series, if it’s indeed to become a series. The Rangers have the skill and tenacity to make you pay for even the slightest mistake. And for the Capitals to have a chance to claw back against the NHL’s best regular season team, Ovechkin has to be at his best — not the version who showed up in the World’s Most Famous Arena, a stage he relishes, and looked vastly unlike the player who scored 23 goals in the final 36 games of the season.

“I thought the first two games looks — a little bit off,” Capitals Coach Spencer Carbery said. “He’s struggling. It’s hard. Like, it’s the playoffs, on the road. He’s getting a tough matchup. But that’s two games, right?”

Two games in which Ovechkin didn’t register a point. This is the 24th playoff series of his 19-year career. In the previous 23, the number of times a series was two games old and Ovechkin didn’t show up on the scoresheet? That would be zero.

“It’s not going to be easy for us,” Ovechkin conceded, before adding, “and it’s not going to be easy for them as well.”

That may be true, because Games 3 and 4 are back in the comfort of Capital One Arena. But the first two games have clearly outlined the differences between these teams. One claimed the Presidents’ Trophy; the other <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/04/16/capitals-flyers-stanley-cup-playoffs/" target=_blank>willed its way into the final playoff spot</a> in its 82nd game. The Rangers are faster, deeper, more skilled and more confident.

And yet, hockey series are evolving entities, and what you believe after one game can change after the next. If it’s going to change for the Capitals — if Washington is going to make it difficult for New York — Ovechkin will have to be a big reason.

It’s well established that this version of the Capitals bears scant resemblance to the Cup contenders of the past. But at least one thing that was true about those teams — some from more than a decade ago — is still true today: For the Caps to be at their best, Ovechkin has to be at his best.

“Anytime he’s going, our team’s going,” said baby-faced Connor McMichael, the 23-year-old who centers Ovechkin’s line and who scored his first career playoff goal Tuesday. “So I’m not too worried about him. I feel like there’s been plenty of times where people say he’s not going, and all of a sudden he scores two, three goals.”

In some ways, even as Carbery says his star has “been through so many situations like this,” this is new territory. In the Ovechkin Era, the Capitals have never dropped the first two games of a playoff series on the road. It’s a measure of their standing as a perennial regular season machine that they have only been the lower-seeded team six previous times. But they have never returned to the District facing this deficit, with the prospect of being swept on home ice.

“We just have to stick together,” Ovechkin said.

More than that: Ovechkin has to break through. Through the first two games, he is credited with one shot on goal. That stat is a little misleading, because he has several attempts that just haven’t found their way through traffic. In the concluding sequence Tuesday night — when the Caps took faceoffs in the Rangers’ zone with the goalie already pulled — Ovechkin had the best opportunities, with the puck on his stick.

And yet, in those moments, he somehow wasn’t the threat he has been for the better part of two decades.

“Even that six-on-five,” Carbery said, “win the draw, [he] steps — and shin pads,” a shot directly into a defender.

Those blocked shots — that’s one of the elements that indicate to Carbery that Ovechkin isn’t quite in sync. But there’s more, and it applies as the series shifts to D.C.

“In a game, five-on-five — and even, I include the power play with him — he should, on a nightly basis, get four or five looks, whether they go in or not,” Carbery said. “That’s the first part, is he’s not getting those looks.

“So whether that’s a product of his matchup, or whether it’s a product of his line combination, whether he’s playing a role in that — we’ve got to find a way to get him in spots where it’s him and [Rangers goalie Igor] Shesterkin and he’s within the top of the circles.”

That’s when and where he’s dangerous. Thus far, he hasn’t been.

The deficit to the clearly superior Rangers isn’t Ovechkin’s fault. But a climb back into the series — and some of what happened Tuesday night indicated that’s possible — will need to involve the captain. He is his team’s only 30-goal scorer. He is, after all these years, still the pulse.

“That’s the one thing about ‘O’ — he can flip it in one game,” Carbery said. “And now he can all of a sudden be a difference-maker and help us win a game — or be a driver in winning us a game on home ice.”

That can happen. It has happened in the past. For these Capitals to have a prayer in this series, it has to happen. Immediately.

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Barry Svrluga became a sports columnist for The Washington Post in December 2016. He arrived at The Post in 2003 to cover football and basketball at the University of Maryland and has covered the Washington Nationals, the Washington Football Team, the Olympics and golf.

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