After a day off that included some Buccaneers football in Tampa Bay, the Washington Capitals got back to work with a busy practice in Florida before heading to North Carolina for a meeting with the Hurricanes.

Aside from the normal practice, coach Spencer Carbery took to the ice with Kenny McCudden to work with guys on skills and individual play, an opportunity he was happy he had time to get as the team looks to bust out of a recent slide.

"There's just little stuff that you pick up on, trends inside of individual players' games. Sometimes there's opportunities after practice to work on those, it's not always shooting a puck into the net," Carbery explained. "There's little things that happen throughout the game."

Washington has dropped six of the last seven decisions and has dropped back-to-back games, including a disappointing 3-2 loss at the hands of the Lightning that saw special teams prove to be the issue again, along with a lack of puck luck and production.

For the Capitals, things are actually looking up at 5-on-5, as they rank first in the league in goals-for percentage (62), second in expected goals-for percentage (58.19) and third in Corsi-for percentage (55.58).

Overall, the group's doing a lot of the right things when it comes to execution and generating pressure and chances. There's just a lack of finish, which continues to confound the team.

"It's really challenging, because as you know in this business there's not a lot of moral victories. When you don't get two points, it doesn't really matter how it looked, you have an L in the column that matters the most," Carbery explained.

For Carbery, there's work that goes into finding the balance between shaking things up and continuing to trust in the process. As cliché as it may sound, there's something to be said about sticking with the game plan and seeing it work out, though it's not always a viable option.

It'll be one that D.C. sticks with for now as the team heads to Carolina to continue a four-game road swing.

"It really tests us as coaches to really stay with your process, and over time, things will shift and hopefully pucks will start to go in and we'll be rewarded and we'll get a few bounces and special teams will flip and even itself out, and shooting percentage will even itself out and you'll hope the wins and points in the standings column come," Carbery said.

"It's trying because guys want results and you wanna win hockey games and when you don't guys are not happy with the way things are going, staff and players included. It's on us as coaches to put out the things we continue to be strong at 5-on-5 and reiterate those and continue to do those things and may get to even another level and continue to work and be hungry to turn our 'tides of luck.' We're trying to stay positive as we go through it."