WASHINGTON – It’s no secret that head coach Spencer Carbery will tell it like it is whether his Washington Capitals are playing well or badly. And that’s exactly what he did after a 2-1 overtime loss to the San Jose Sharks.

Carbery didn’t mince his words and praised his team for an “extremely disappointing” performance from which DC still managed to get a point.

“Our puck play was obviously terrible. We couldn’t string the passes together. You saw the execution,” Carbery said, adding: “It’s just this ugly game where we start to lose structure. We don’t do breakaways, 2-on-1s, 3-on-2s. It’s just a total fire drill until the end of the hockey game.

Washington’s players agreed with that assessment.

“We let two points slip tonight. It’s frustrating,” said Logan Thompson, who stopped 29 of 31 shots in the loss.

Although the Capitals got off to a strong start in the first game, San Jose was able to take a 1-0 lead with a goal from Tyler Toffoli. And although Nic Dowd scored the equalizer in the second period, Washington was just trying to hold on to a point as the Sharks took the ice in the final 40 minutes.

Tom Wilson double-faulted late in regulation after catching Macklin Celebrini high up, which ultimately led to William Eklund scoring the overtime winner on the extended power play.

“It felt like a bad night, which is unacceptable,” Rasmus Sandin said of the loss. “We have to control the puck better and play mature hockey.”

The overtime loss ended a four-game winning streak for Washington, which had scored at least four goals in every game during that span.

Connor McMichael believed that the Capitals developed a habit of passing or doing too much on offense, which led to their lack of success against Mackenzie Blackwood.

“We made too many plays, maybe we thought it would be easy,” he shrugged. “We just got away from our game.”

Dowd also noted that there was a bit of a “lull” and lack of energy throughout the game.

“It’s kind of on us internally,” Dowd said, adding, “We just got away from what makes us a good hockey team.”

Washington will return to training on Wednesday where it will try to shake off the defeat and avoid falling further into the tendencies that emerged on Tuesday – although Carbery admitted he has been anything but from the team’s play at home of late was impressed.

Nevertheless, the Capitals want to prove that this is just an “isolated case”.

“I think we all understand here what makes us a good hockey team,” Dowd said.

“We weren’t ourselves tonight, and that’s okay. There are still a lot of games left, this is a good game to learn from,” Thompson added.