October 3 vs. Boston Bruins at TD Garden
Time: 7 p.m.
TV: Monumental Sports Network
Radio: 106/7 THE FAN, Capitals Radio 24/7
Washington Capitals (1-1-1)
Boston Bruins (1-1-1)
The Capitals head into the back half of their six-game preseason schedule on Tuesday night when they visit the Bruins in Boston. After Tuesday’s tilt with the Bruins, the Caps will finish the preseason with a home-and-home set of games against the Columbus Blue Jackets. Washington visits Ohio’s capital city on Thursday, then the Caps conclude the 2023 exhibition slate with a Saturday night home game against the Blue Jackets.
Through three exhibition games, the Caps are all even at 1-1-1. Most recently, they absorbed a 5-2 loss at the hands of the Red Wings in Detroit on Saturday night. The Wings dressed a highly representative roster for that game while the Caps did not, and a sluggish start put Washington in a hole from which it could not extricate itself. The Caps fell down by two goals in the first and were never able to shrink that deficit.
“Going back through it,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery of Saturday’s setback in Detroit, “I thought that other than the start and the special teams – the 4-on-4 goal; we didn’t do a very good job on that, the special teams and the 5-on-3 – but other than that, I thought we did a lot of really good things. From a controlling play standpoint, if you open up your phone and look at the box score, you’re like, ‘Ugh, that was a young lineup from Washington that got beat 5-2, handily.’ And I didn’t think it went that way.”
Carbery noted that Washington matched the Wings in scoring chances for most of Saturday’s game, and he opined that the forward trio of Dylan Strome with Matthew Phillips and Sonny Milano was the Caps’ best line on that night in Motown. Phillips scored Washington’s lone 5-on-5 goal on a beautiful tic-tac-toe setup from his linemates, and Strome scored the Caps’ other goal on a power play, with Phillips picking up an assist.
“All three of those guys on that [Phillips] goal make great, great plays,” says Carbery. “I thought that line was our best line that night. [Riley Sutter’s] line had some moments of some real good sustained pressure in the offensive zone, but that [Strome] line had a lot of those types of plays where they’re reading off of one another, and they’re creating. And they’re highly skilled players.”
Phillips was Calgary’s sixth-round pick (166th overall) in the 2016 NHL Draft, and he got into one game with the Flames in 2020-21, making his NHL debut that season. Despite consecutive 30-goal seasons for Calgary’s AHL affiliates in the two seasons since, Phillips got only two more NHL games over that span, both of them coming last season. Seeking a fresh start as an unrestricted free agent, Phillips signed with the Caps on July 1, just days after his AHL coach for the last two seasons – Mitch Love – signed on as an assistant coach with Washington.
Now 25 and with five pro seasons under his belt, Phillips is trying to crack Washington’s opening night roster and he hopes to prove that he can survive and thrive at the NHL level, despite being listed at 5-foot-8 and 160 pounds.
“He’s done a really good job through training camp,” says Carbery of Phillips. “And I think even last game, he has put the coaching staff on notice of what he does. Going through his shifts and his touches, and what he brings, you’re starting to see obviously a player that is undersized. But it doesn’t affect him a whole lot when it comes to his compete level, ability to get in on the forecheck, win loose pucks.
“Yeah, he’s going to get bumped around a little bit, but we’ve just found his game to be really effective at keeping pucks alive, making plays when they’re available, being in good spots – the structure part that we’ve talked about, he’s been dialed in – and he’s doing a good job of making a case for himself.”
As he heads into his sixth pro season, Phillips is excited to be seen with new eyes in a new organization.
“It’s been great so far,” says Phillips. “I think I have a similar view of how to play the game with how we’re trying to play the game here. It’s a lot of speed and quickness, and I’ve been learning a lot and it’s been good so far.”
At Monday’s practice, Phillips skated the right side of a line with Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom. Because of his size, his age and the amount of pro experience he has accrued, it’s convenient for some to write off Phillips as a “tweener,” one of those players who excels at the AHL level but whose game doesn’t translate to the NHL for whatever reason, which, in Phillips’ case, might be his size. But that’s the whole point of being seen by fresh eyes in a new organization.
“I think there is a huge benefit for him, and he’s trying to take advantage of it,” says Carbery. “And there’s opportunity, too. And he’s got someone [Love] who’s been an advocate for him. But Mitch has been great. He’s like, ‘I’ve coached this player for the last two years, and I know what he’s about. I’m going to let you guys see what you see, and I’ll give you comments here and there on my experiences with him.’ But he’s been really good on letting us form an opinion on him. He has seen him more than human on the planet for the last two years, every day in practice and all the games.
“And think about too, the last two years. How many wins has that kid been a part of? Winning hockey. They won probably more than 80 games (96, actually, just in the regular season) over the last two years, and he’s a first-line player in that lineup. So what does that tell me? It tells me A) he is part of a winning team. Okay, Captain Obvious. But B) he is making plays, he is in winning games. He is doing things that are required for teams that win, and I have a lot of time for that.”
Phillips is likely to suit up for the third time in four games for Washington on Tuesday in Boston. We published it right here over a week ago, ahead of Phillips’ preseason debut with the Caps against Buffalo on Sept. 24, but here again is what Love had to say about Phillips when we asked about him in early September, prior to the start of training camp.
“Outside of [goaltender] Dustin Wolf,” begins Love, “the last couple of years in Calgary and Stockton, he's been our best player many nights. The best way for me to describe him is he's a gamer. This kid's 150 pounds, 5-foot-7 on a heavy and a tall day, but he goes to the hard areas, which is not something you see every day.
“He’s got 30 goals in back-to-back seasons, and I would say probably 25 of them or 20 of them each season are within 10 feet of the net. He's intelligent, he sees the game, he's got a high level of hockey IQ. And he's a competitor and I think that's why you've seen the success he's had at the American Hockey League level. Obviously, I was a little biased and happy that he took a chance at a different organization. He wants to make the National Hockey League; he wants a push for a job. I think he's really excited to come here and showcase his talents and what he can provide, and I'm excited to see him here again and see how he looks here in camp.”