For 65 minutes on Saturday afternoon, the Capital and the Boston Bruins played a honey of a competitive hockey game, but those 65 minutes didn’t settle the score. That was left to an anticlimactic shootout that threatened to stretch past sundown until Boston’s Fraser Minten finally became the only one of 18 shooters to find the back of the net in a dreary nine-round shootout. Minten’s marker in the skills competition lifted the B’s to their third win in as many meetings with Washington this season, 3-2.

Saturday afternoon’s game between the Caps and the Boston Bruins deserved a much better finish than the stultifying nine-round shootout in which several attempts were misses, either off the post or with the “shots” flubbed or muted to the point where it was difficult to tell whether the trigger was actually pulled or not.

Trying make up ground late in the season in the chase for the playoffs, the Caps desperately needed two points from Saturday’s game, ideally in regulation against one of the teams they’re trying to chase down. The Caps came close, but they couldn’t quite close it out.

“I think it’s a highly competitive game against a good hockey team,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “When you get into those games, it’s a fine line; there’s a few plays that could go either way on both sides. I thought we did enough good things to win that game.

“So, what would you say is the difference – other than the obvious one being the shootout – to win that game in regulation? Could have used one of those [late] power plays [in the third period], no question. But our penalty kill did a great job as well, so they had some opportunities there and we killed a 5-on-3. We don’t capitalize on our power plays, but I thought we had some good looks, too, that we just, we put ourselves in good spots, we just didn’t finish those opportunities on [Boston goaltender Jeremy] Swayman.”

The home team twice had a one-goal lead – the only leads the Caps enjoyed in the 185 minutes of hockey they played against Boston this season – and they had a pair of late power play opportunities with which they might have written themselves a better ending. Although the Caps picked up a point, they desperately needed two of them against a team they’ve been trying to chase down in the standings for weeks now.

For the third time in as many meetings this season, the Caps and Bruins played to a scoreless opening period on Saturday afternoon in DC. The two teams played a couple minutes of 4-on-4 hockey, and the Caps had the lone power play of the opening frame, a man advantage that produced three of Washington’s eight first-period shots at the Boston net.

Early in the second, the Caps finally forged the first lead they’ve managed against the B’s this season, courtesy of a Matt Roy right point drive through traffic at 1:15 of the second period.

The lead held up for just over 10 minutes, until Boston’s Charlie McAvoy delivered a center point clapper that found twine behind Logan Thompson at 11:57 of the middle period.

Unsurprisingly, the Caps and Bruins headed into the third period all even at 1-1 – again, for the third time in as many meetings this season – and it looked like another one of those games where we wait to see which team blinks first.

Last Saturday in Boston, the Caps blinked first. Today, it was Boston. The Bruins iced the puck, the Caps won the ensuing left dot draw in the Boston zone, and from the left point, Rasmus Sandin put a seeing eye shot right under the bar on the short side behind Swayman, restoring Washington’s one-goal lead at 3:12 of the third.

The Capitals, coming off a 2-1 comeback win over the white-hot Sabres in Buffalo on Thursday, still needed to navigate nearly 17 minutes to come away with a second straight win by that same score, and they couldn’t pull it off.

Although Washington’s penalty killing outfit – which had surrendered a power-play goal to the Bruins in each of the first two games between the two teams – successfully snuffed out a pair of Boston power plays early in the third, including 49 seconds worth of a two-man advantage, the Caps couldn’t close out the Bruins with that slim 2-1 lead.

Boston evened up the game with another goal originating from the point; this time it was Boston center Pavel Zacha filling in at the left point who took the shot that McAvoy deflected past Thompson for his second goal of the game at 10:09, squaring the score at 2-2.

Washington had a pair of late power plays with which to alter the course of the contest, and the second one looked as though it should have been a lengthy 5-on-3 for the Caps when the puck was clearly sailed over the glass for delay of game, but the linesman ruled the puck had been shot off the yellow plate at the bottom of the boards, and physics took care of the rest.

“I had like five different people, tell me 100% on both sides of it,” shrugs Washington winger Tom Wilson. “So, I haven’t seen it with my own eyes. The linesman was pretty sure, but I heard broadcast was pretty sure, and I heard our coaches say that it was straight out. So, I don’t know.”

It was a tough break for a Washington team that has been good with the 5-on-3 this season, though not so much with the 5-on-4. And after the Caps failed to click on the second of those opportunities, they had to kill off a carryover Boston power play, knocking out the first 75 seconds in regulation and killing off the remaining 45 seconds in the 4-on-3 overtime format.

And because there were no stoppages after the expiration of the penalty, the final 4:15 of overtime was played at 4-on-4; the two teams played 8 minutes and 15 seconds of 4-on-4 in Saturday’s game.

For the Caps, the bottom line of this game – and ultimately, their season series with Boston – comes down to the thinnest of margins. In the 185 minutes of hockey played between Washington and Boston this season, the Bruins have six points to show for their efforts while the Caps have just the single point they pulled today. And that’s despite the two teams playing a mere 82 seconds of those 185 minutes with a lead of more than a goal.

“We have two power plays at the end of the game,” says Wilson. “At the end of the day, we’ve got to score a goal there; it’s not good enough. We have the game on our stick, and we’re supposed to be the guys that can make it happen, and we don’t.

“So, that’s frustrating. We needed that. We needed the two points, so it’s a tough one.”