Bring It On Home – After the Caps landed at Dulles in the wee hours of Sunday morning following their season-opening two-game road trip, they were able to head home and sleep in their own beds, starting a stretch of 35 of the next 37 nights they’ll be able to do so. Starting with tonight’s home opener against Pittsburgh, the Caps will play 11 of their next 13 games at home.
The Caps will duck out of town just twice between now and the second week of November; they return to Raleigh for a second early season road game against the Hurricanes on Oct. 13 and they face the Predators in Nashville on Oct. 29. Aside from those two quick trips, the Caps play exclusively at home until a Nov. 10 visit to Ottawa.
Tonight game with the Pens also starts a three-game homestand with three different starting times. In fact, these next 11 home games feature six different start times.
Depth Charge – Across the entirety of the last two seasons, the Caps carried eight defensemen on their roster. Last season, their top six defensemen missed a total of 56 games, 27 of which came from games John Carlson missed before and after he was dealt to Anaheim on March 6. The season before, the Caps’ top six was even healthier, missing a combined total of just 21 games all season.
Between the overall health of the defense corps and the availability of two extra defensemen to fill the gaps, there wasn’t much playing time to be had among the two extras, Dylan McIlrath and Declan Chisholm last season, and McIlrath and Alex Alexeyev the season before.
As the Caps take the ice for their third game of the season tonight, they’ll do so without the services of Matt Roy, a top pair defender and – with 519 career games played – the second most experienced defender on the Washington depth chart. Roy suffered a lower body injury in the second period of Saturday’s game in Tampa, and he won’t play tonight against the Pens.
This season, Washington is carrying just seven defensemen, at least until Rasmus Sandin returns from offseason knee surgery. Tonight, Dylan McIlrath slots in for Roy, but the remainder of the defense corps will all need to step up and assume some of the minutes and some of the responsibilities that would normally fall to Roy.
“We love Mac, period,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “But we love him when he’s in the lineup and we know what he brings. The guys love him, he’s an incredible teammate, he works his ass off every single day, and that’s why he continues at his age to defy a lot of naysayers and odds, that he continues to be on an NHL roster and play NHL games. And it’s a credit to him and how much work he puts in, and we love having him on our team and as a part of our organization.”
With a 20-minute blueliner like Roy missing from the lineup, all six defensemen will find themselves eating up more minutes tonight, and they’ll potentially be doing so with less than familiar partners and in less than familiar roles.
“Obviously, Matt Roy is an important part of our defensive corps, and our leader, too,” says Washington defenseman Martin Fehervary, who celebrated his 27th birthday on Tuesday. “So it’s going to be up to us – to a lot of guys – to step up and play more minutes.
“Last game, we actually – me and Aliaksei Protas – ended up playing one shift together because we were short on defense. So whoever is going to need to play will play, and we’ll try to do the best we can.”
With Roy unavailable and Chychrun in the penalty box, the Caps were down to four defensemen when Protas took a twirl as Fehervary’s blueline partner late in the second period against the Lightning.
McIlrath played 10 straight early season games – he sat out the season opener and played the next 10 – for Washington in 2024-25, and the Caps went 8-2-0 in that stretch. He played just seven more games all season, and he did not see action in consecutive contests again until April, in the final days of the season.
Last season, McIlrath logged 13 games, playing once in October and just five times before the flip of the calendar. It wasn’t until January that he skated in consecutive contests.
The role of the seventh – and eighth – defenseman is one of the most thankless in pro sports. Like every athlete, you’ve got to be constantly ready to play both physically and mentally, all while knowing that the preparation and readiness is going to be for naught most nights of the season.
McIlrath never makes waves or complains; he just makes sure he’s ready to roll when needed.
“Definitely being in this seven/eight defenseman role, you have to lean back on past experiences to remind yourself that you can do it and you can play,” says McIlrath. “Obviously, there'll be a little anxiousness and nerves, but that's to be expected. But yeah, just looking back on a few big moments that I've had in this league, or even the good games I've completed, just helps give you the confidence you can go out there and do it again.”
In an Oct. 23, 2024, game against Philadelphia during that span of 10 straight appearances for Big Mac, McIlrath notched the only multiple-point game of his career with a pair of very different assists on goals from Taylor Raddysh and Connor McMichael, respectively.
“And when you're waiting [for the opportunity], I just try to keep my body and mind sharp,” he says. “It's easy to say, but I try to get an advantage of doing more in the gym than the guys that are playing every night. So, I’m trying my best to stay lean and sharp, and when my time comes through, be ready.”
At 34, McIlrath has logged more miles than money in this game, but he loves the game, embraces his role and is philosophical about his role. He knows he is better suited for this role now than he would have been a decade ago.
“In your younger years, you're looking to make like huge strides year to year, development-wise, with your game,” he says. “As you get older, father time may restrict some of your physical ability, but same time, I'm trying to stay as sharp as possible, and I can always add things.
“Obviously, my game is pretty meat and potatoes. I'm not going to be doing toe drags out there all of a sudden after one summer. But with [assistant coach, skills] Kenny [McCudden], especially, it's all about puck touches. So whether it's just on the blue line, getting that puck on your stick, making a flat D to D pass, or making the elusive move, putting it down the wall – simple little plays that probably fans don't even realize – the execution part of it is what's the toughest when you sit out that long. You kind of lose that and when you get the puck on your stick, you just want to get rid of it because you're not confident.
“So that's what really Kenny and [assistant coach Patrick Wellar] have been trying to work with me on, to make sure when I do get in the lineup, I'm not just throwing the puck away. And we're a possession team, so we want to keep the puck. So it's stuff like that that'll help me when I get in the lineup.”
The Caps have been a pretty good team during McIlrath’s time in the organization, and during his time in the lineup. They are 24-15-0 in the 39 games he has played across the last four seasons, and they are 19-11-0 with him in the lineup over these last two full seasons in which he has been on the roster.
“And when he gets in the lineup, we know exactly what he brings,” says Carbery of the veteran defenseman. “And another side point I would put to Mac, which I think goes under the radar. And say what you want, I want to say over my time here our record with Dylan Mcilrath in the lineup is something like 20 and nine [he was close]. That's not bad; that'll probably win you the Presidents’ Trophy every year. But he's a valuable player to our team, and when he's in the lineup, we seem to have success, so we're excited to get him in there.”
My Rival – Given Alex Ovechkin’s Monday announcement that this season will be his final one in the NHL, tonight’s Caps-Pens tilt is one of as many as four regular season games remaining of the long-running, 22-season rivalry between Ovechkin and Pens captain Sidney Crosby.
We had a chance to chat with a few folks about the importance of the Ovechkin-Crosby rivalry and what it has meant to the NHL. The rivalry started with the debuts of both players on the same night – Oct. 5, 2005 – the first games played after a yearlong lockout that wiped out the entire 2004-05 season. The Caps and Pens didn’t meet until Nov. 22, 2005 in Pittsburgh, but both players were the talk of the hockey world and the NHL for that season, and they finished 1-2 in Calder Trophy balloting at the conclusion of that campaign.
“Him and Crosby are incredible, what they’ve done,” says Caps president of hockey operations Brian MacLellan. “And through all the changes to the game, those two – I don't want to say they created it – have been a big part of whatever's gone on in this League. They've kept the interest in it, and the growth is because of those two; that rivalry was phenomenal. Same age, played against each other in playoff games, and it was genuine. It wasn't manufactured, and it was competitive between the two organizations and the two players. It was fun to watch, and I think it created a lot of interest in the game.”
When Ovechkin and Crosby took the ice for their first NHL games 21 years ago, the League’s buildings had been dark for over 500 days, in one of the gloomiest chapters of North American pro sports history.
“They were kind of our Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa,” says former Caps captain Jeff Halpern, now an assistant coach in Tampa Bay. “Coming out of labor negotiations, and fans were like, ‘Well, we'll never come back and see a game.’
“But there was so much excitement around those two guys, but I think even more so. I remember a game against Philly – I don't know if it was preseason or not, but it was early on – and Ovi scored a goal and he skated by their bench and winked at their bench. I always tell that story because I was like, ‘What the … you’re going to get killed, or you're going to get us killed. You can't do that.’
“But Ovi started something where it was okay to celebrate and be loud and be excited. Before him, a young guy couldn’t be excited back then; it was still just maybe a high five and that was it. And this guy was like a rock star. He touched the ice and people hung on every move and every celebration, and it became a focal point of not just DC, but the League in general.
“And that excitement, and then as good as Ovi was, you have a guy in a different style, who was just as good and just as dominant. And the fact that they played in the same division, played in playoff series, it was awesome to watch, and I think that players kind of joined with that. But for a really long time, they carried the NHL with that excitement.”
Although the two players were drafted only one year apart, nearly two full calendar years separates them in age. Early on, the rivalry was rancorous and some bad blood coursed through it. But in recent seasons, each player has come to a seemingly organic, healthy and mutual respect for each another, taking the rivalry to a new and more mature – but no less compelling – phase.
With the passage of time and the pain the lockout inflicted, we tend to forget how crucial that rivalry was to restoring the game and the League to a better place in the collective minds of hockey fans around the world.
“I think the rivalry saved it,” says MacLellan. “I think they know it saved it too. And they've been around this long – and there's good young guys coming through now – but their story and that rivalry has continued up right until now.”
Caps senior vice president concurs with MacLellan and his old Princeton teammate Halpern.
“One hundred percent, I couldn't agree with that more,” says Patrick. “What the league did at the time was really painful, but you look back at it now and how needed it was, and now you see Major League Baseball talking about a similar thing.
“And what a stroke of luck to have Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby both basically starting what ended up being really long NHL careers with all the accolades and everything they accomplished, starting that out at the same time – and throw in Evgeni Malkin as well – and with two teams that are already rivals, you had some really easy marketing right there for the League, and both those two players more than lived up to it and did their part.
“I think having them at that time in the League, coming out of the lockout, it was it was fantastic stroke of luck for the League that that they were smart enough to capitalize on it. And I one hundred percent think it helped put the League on the trajectory to where it's standing today. It’s such a different looking League in a better way than what it was coming out of that lockout.”
In The Nets – Logan Thompson gets the net tonight for the Capitals. He enters tonight’s game on the heels of an impressive 31-save victory over the Hurricanes in Carolina on Friday in Washington’s season opener. That victory improved his career record in the month of October to 18-5-0 in 23 starts, with a pair of shutouts, a 2.00 GAA and a .927 save pct.
Lifetime against the Penguins, Thompson is 5-1-0 in six appearances – all starts – with a shutout, a 2.18 GAA and a .918 save pct.
For the Penguins, we are expecting to see Arturs Silovs between the pipes for tonight’s first of four Metro Division meetings between the Caps and the Penguins. The Latvian netminder – a sixth-round choice (156th overall) of the Vancouver Canucks in the 2021 NHL Draft, Silovs is seeking his 30th career NHL victory tonight in the District. Most of those victories came last season, his first with the Pens, when he went 19-12-8 in 39 appearances (38 starts).
Lifetime against the Capitals, Silovs is 1-1-0 in two starts and appearances, with a 4.04 GAA and an .869 save pct.
All Down The Line – Here’s how we expect the Caps and Penguins to look when they take the ice for Wednesday’s Washington home opener:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
89-Tuch, 80-Dubois, 43-Wilson
8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 72-Beauvillier
21-A. Protas, 62-I. Protas, 25-Kyrou
22-Jenner, 34-Sourdif, 9-Leonard
Defense
6-Chychrun, 27-Liljegren
42-Fehervary, 73-Desharnais
44-Hutson, 52-McIlrath
Goaltenders
79-Lindgren
48-Thompson
Injured/Out
3-Roy
38-Sandin
Healthy Extras
53-Frank
63-Miroshnichenko
PITTSBURGH
Forwards
22-Lapierre, 87-Crosby, 67-Rakell
59-Chinakhov, 18-Novak, 71-Malkin
41-Koivunen, 81-Kindel, 17-Rust
19-Dewar, 46-Lizotte, 14-Robertson
Defense
72-Karlile, 65-Karlsson
49-Girard, 6-Korczak
57-van Riemsdyk, 58-Letang
Goaltenders
1-Murashov
37-Silovs
Injured/out
16-Brazeau
27-Graves
Healthy Extras
7-Solovyov
10-Kuzmenko
11-Hallander
25-Soderblom
