Back-to-Back – Tonight in Tampa, the Caps finish up a set of season-opening back-to-back road games against a pair of the top teams in the Eastern Conference. After prevailing 5-2 over the Canes in Carolina on Friday, the Caps aim to stay hungry on Saturday night when they supply the opposition for the Lightning’s home opener.
In Friday’s win over Carolina, the Caps adhered to a winning road formula; they scored first and then added multiple goals to pad the lead. The Caps then protected what was a 4-0 lead early in the second, but they did it the hard way, successfully snuffing out five of six successive Carolina power plays in a span of less than 23 minutes of playing time.
On the first night of a new season with a handful of new faces in the lineup, Washington’s depth came to the fore. Logan Thompson was terrific during that daunting stretch of Carolina power plays, but the Caps’ depth showed through, too. They had eight different skaters chew up at least three and a half minutes of shorthanded ice time.
Despite all those hard minutes on the PK, their depth enabled the Caps to keep 16 of their 18 skaters under 20 minutes on the night; only Matt Roy (22:29) and Vincent Desharnais (21:15) logged more than 20.
“Yeah, and that’s great,” says Caps winger Aliaksei Protas, of how the Caps’ depth will impact their special teams and their overall ice time this season. “That’s going to save energy for everybody moving forward.
“It’s also nice to have competition inside of the room; everybody is going to push each other and make everybody better. And you can’t take nights off because we are so deep; all 14 forwards are really good players. You’ve got to work every day to earn your spot, and that’s good for everybody. It is going to push us to the limits, and we’ve going to get better every day.”
The other side of that coin is the Caps know they need a more disciplined 60 minutes tonight in Tampa, against a Lightning team with a potent power play, and one that went 0-for-7 against the Rangers in New York on Thursday in its own season opener.
“Going forward, we're going to have to hold ourselves to a high standard,” says Alex Tuch, who scored twice – including the game-winner – in his Caps debut on Friday. “I don't even think it's close to what's going to be our best game; I don't think it was a perfect game by any means.”
Thompson helped paper over many of those miscues with a sterling night in the nets.
“Still, some you see some tendencies from summer skates and extending shifts and a couple plays of the puck that we definitely could have cleaned up,” says Tuch. “But that's why we have one of the best goalies in my eyes, definitely one of the best goalies in the League right now. It helps give us confidence, and we're just going to keep trying to push on in front of him.”
Familiar and Familial Foe – Eight years ago tonight at Capital One Arena, the Caps raised their 2018 Stanley Cup Championship banner before laying a 7-0 thrashing on the visiting Boston Bruins. Then-Caps defenseman John Carlson logged a team high 24:06 while contributing a goal and an assist to the offensive cause.
Tonight in Tampa, the Caps face Carlson – and vice versa – for the first time ever in the Lightning’s home opener.
Months after the March 6 trade that sent Carlson – then late into his 17th season with the Caps – to the Anaheim Ducks, the 36-year-old veteran signed a two-year, $17 million contract with Tampa Bay.
Going up against their former teammate – and a legendary Capital who holds virtually all of the teams records for defensemen – is likely to be an odd feeling for the Caps, even those of more recent vintage.
“Personally, I liked him better in red,” says Caps goalie Logan Thompson. “I think he looks better. But it’s going to be tough. He was a good guy to me, a good teammate, a good friend. So he’s going to come out hard and our guys are going to be excited to see him. But at the end of the day, it’s a game against Tampa and that’s going to be our main focus.”
“I know he’s not going to take it easy on us and we’re not going to take it easy on him,” says Caps winger Tom Wilson, who became the second-longest tenured pro athlete in DC upon Carlson’s departure. “But it’ll be funny; I’m sure there will be some laughs. He is like family to a lot of guys in this room, so a lot of years together. But at the end of the day, there is two points on the line, and we want to make sure that we’re starting well. And I think once the puck drops, it will be all business.”
From the start of his first full season in the NHL in 2010-11 through March 5 of this year, Carlson ranks fifth in raw ice time (over 26,600 minutes) among all NHL defensemen across that span. And among the top 40 of that group, he is the only blueliner to average at least three minutes per game on the power play and at least two and a half minutes per game on the penalty kill.
“It'll be very different seeing him in that jersey and having a game plan against him,” says Carbery. “Yeah, it'll be a very, very different feeling, as I'm sure for some of our guys that have played with him for a long, long time, we'll have the same feeling.
“But nothing but gratitude for what John has done for me personally, and in the time we spent together was instrumental in the last three years of us being able to have a little bit of success, and I'll never forget that because from a leadership, from a veteran guy, from someone that won the Stanley Cup as a young head coach coming into the National Hockey League, for him to treat me the way that he did, and he just put everything he had on the line for our team and buy into everything that the coaching staff was saying. I'll never forget that.”
In the Lightning’s Thursday night season opener against the Rangers in New York, Carlson led Tampa Bay defensemen with 23:41 in ice time, of which a whopping 9:08 was on the Bolts power play. Carlson has logged 1,160 career NHL games, and the season opener was one of very few in which he registered no time on the PK.
“Obviously last year, I didn’t play them,” says Carlson of the Caps. “But I didn’t have to wait too long this year. So yeah, here we are.
“I think it will be weird. Obviously, like I said before, as soon as the schedule came out, it didn’t take long to see it. And I don’t know; we’ll see what happens. But I think at minimum it will be a little bit weird.”
In The Middle Of It All – Congratulations to Caps center Dylan Strome, who skates in his 600th NHL game tonight in Tampa. Strome has appeared in 326 of Washington’s 329 games since he signed with the Caps as a free agent in the summer of 2022.
Since arriving in Washington, Strome is the team leader in assists (176) and power-play points (99) and is second to only Alex Ovechkin with 98 goals and 274 points over that span.
In The Nets – A night after Thompson helped the Caps to an opening night win, Charlie Lindgren gets the net tonight in Tampa against the Lightning. Last season, the Caps opened at home before hitting the road for a set of back-to-back road games at the Islanders and Rangers, respectively. Lindgren’s first start came in the back half of the back-to-back, and he made 35 saves to shutout the Blueshirts 1-0, making an Anthony Beauvillier goal stand up as the game-winner.
Lifetime against the Lightning, Lindgren is 3-1-1 in seven appearances – five starts – with a 2.33 GAA and a .918 save pct.
For the Lightning, Andrei Vasilevskiy will be in the net tonight. The 32-year-old Russian will appear in his 600th NHL game tonight, and he opens this season exactly 30 wins shy of becoming the 16th NHL netminder ever to reach 400 career victories. That milestone is certainly attainable this season; he led the NHL with 39 victories last season, the ninth consecutive season in which he has notched at least 30 wins.
Lifetime against Washington, Vasilevskiy is 12-11-2 in 25 appearances, all starts. He has one shutout, a 3.06 GAA and a .904 save pct. against the Caps.
All Down The Line – Here’s how we expect the Caps and Lightning to line up for Saturday’s game in Tampa:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
89-Tuch, 80-Dubois, 43-Wilson
8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 9-Leonard
21-A. Protas, 62-I. Protas, 25-Kyrou
22-Jenner, 34-Sourdif, 72-Beauvillier
Defense
6-Chychrun, 3-Roy
44-Hutson, 73-Desharnais
42-Fehervary, 27-Liljegren
Goaltenders
79-Lindgren
48-Thompson
Injured/Out
38-Sandin
Healthy Extras
52-McIlrath
53-Frank
63-Miroshnichenko
TAMPA BAY
Forwards
95-Mikheyev, 21-Point, 86-Kucherov
38-Hagel, 71-Cirelli, 59-Guentzel
94-Geekie, 10-Harkins, 93-Goncalves
25-Viel, 28-Girgensons, 29-Holmberg
Defense
90-Moser, 74-Carlson
51-D’Astous, 77-Hedman
27-McDonagh, 81-Cernak
Goaltenders
88-Vasilevskiy
35-Hildeby
Injured/out
17-James
37-Gourde
Healthy Extras
24-Crozier
49-Sabourin
78-Lilleberg
