Caps Clash with Coyotes
The Caps play the middle match of their three-game road trip on Friday night against the Coyotes in Arizona
Washington puts its four-game winning streak on the line on Friday night in Glendale, Ariz. against the Arizona Coyotes. The Caps' current winning streak matches their longest winning run of this season, and they will enter Friday's game with 11 wins in their last 13 games and 17 in their last 23.
Friday's game is the middle match of a three-game road trip for the Capitals, who started the journey on the good foot on Tuesday night in Dallas with a 4-3 overtime victory over the Stars. Andre Burakovsky scored the game-winner for Washington, and he also scored the game's first goal and set up Brett Connolly's tying tally with 3:26 remaining in regulation. Braden Holtby made 33 saves to earn his 20th win of the season and his first ever against the Stars.
Burakovsky and linemates Connolly and Lars Eller each enjoyed multi-point games in Dallas, supplying most of Washington's offense on a night when it was needed.
"It feels good that we're back together again and producing," says Burakovsky. "We were kind of cold for a few games here, but obviously really good that we come back as a unit and get it done."
Burakovsky goals on Tuesday against the Stars were his first since Oct. 20, when he netted his first goal of the season against the Red Wings in Detroit. Burakovsky suffered a broken thumb the very next night against Florida, and missed the next 20 games as a result of that injury. He returned to the Washington lineup for a Dec. 8 game against the Rangers, but had just one assist in five games before his three-point outburst against Dallas on Tuesday.
"I think the other games, I haven't been maybe creating as many chances as I 've wanted to," says Burakovsky. "But I've had a couple of looks. I think I've been skating well since I came back, but the only thing you need is one easy one that bounces off your pants or whatever. It's just one goal, and it's going to build the confidence. Then you feel more comfortable to hold onto the puck and make plays. I think I showed that today; as soon as I got that first one, it was kind of a relief, and now I'm just building my game."
Neither of those Burakovsky goals against the Stars went in off his pants, by the way. Both were far side snipe shots, and his first one came from the right side of the ice while his second one came from the left.
Friday's game in Arizona also starts Washington's seventh set of back-to-back games this season; the Caps will make their first ever visit to Las Vegas on Saturday afternoon to face the Vegas Golden Knights, the NHL's 31st team that began its existence this season.
In their first game of December, the Coyotes blanked the New Jersey Devils by a 5-0 count behind ex-Devils netminder Scott Wedgewood, acquired from New Jersey earlier this season. But the Coyotes have been as dry as the surrounding desert since, dropping seven straight (0-6-1) while being outscored by a combined 24-9.
Most recently, the Coyotes dropped a 3-2 home ice decision here to the Florida Panthers on Tuesday night. The Capitals are the fourth of five teams to hit Glendale during the Coyotes' current five-game homestand; Colorado comes in on Saturday to close out the homestand, so the Coyotes will also be starting off a set of games on back-to-back nights on Friday.
Early in November, the Coyotes gave the Caps all they could handle in the first meeting between the two teams this season. Arizona scored the game's first goal just one minute into the contest, and the Coyotes owned a 2-0 lead before the game was seven minutes old. The Caps came back to force overtime with goals later in the first and in the second, and Washington prevailed 3-2 on John Carlson's goal in the final minute of overtime.
The relative recentness of that game should help the Caps to avoid overlooking the Coyotes, who are a very talented bunch that's just scuffling to find a level of consistency.
"I think it helps a little bit," says Caps coach Barry Trotz. "One thing you have to remember if you watch the Coyotes right now, they're playing pretty good hockey. They're not playing really poor hockey, at least in the games I've seen.
"They're a young team, and when things go a little bit off the rails for them, just like every young team they're learning to win consistently and that; they haven't found quite that consistent mechanism, if you will, where if something doesn't go their way they can sort of stop those momentum [shifts].
"But they've got lots of talent. They've got some dynamic people. I think they're a good young hockey team. I wouldn't look at their record, I look at their team and how they play, and they're right there. They gave us all that we could handle in Washington, so if there is anything in that last game that we played against them, you recognize how talented they are."
Three of Arizona's seven victories this season have come at the expense of Metropolitan Division teams. The differences between the Capitals and the Coyotes thus far this season can be illustrated succinctly with one stat. The Caps and Coyotes have each scored the game's first goal 18 times in 2017-18, with the Coyotes having played one more game (36) than Washington (35). But the Caps are 15-2-1 in games in which they score the game's first goal while the Coyotes are just 5-10-3 in the same situation.
Along with the Capitals and the Montreal Canadiens, the Coyotes are one of three NHL teams that will have games on back-to-back nights on both sides of the league's three-day Christmas break.
