Caps Get First Look at Devils in '20-21
Caps look to rebound from sluggish Saturday outing in a Sunday matinee match vs. New Jersey
For the first time in more than a dozen years, the Caps are set to play the back end of a set of "originally scheduled" back-to-back games on home ice. A day after the Capitals came out on the short end of a 4-1 decision to the New York Rangers on Saturday afternoon at Capital One Arena, they're back in action on the home sheet once again, hosting New Jersey on Sunday afternoon.
The last time Washington's regular season schedule included games on consecutive days at home was Jan. 31-Feb. 1, 2009, when it hosted Detroit and Ottawa, respectively in a set of weekend games, each with a 12:30 local start time. The Caps took down the Red Wings 4-2 on Saturday and stymied the Sens 7-4 on Sunday on that weekend just 12 years ago, behind a pair of Alex Ovechkin goals against Detroit and an Ovechkin hat trick against the Sens.
Back in 2008-09, Washington was a 7-3-1 team (.682 points pct.) in afternoon contests and it went 43-21-7 at night (.655). In recent seasons though, the Caps have scuffled while playing earlier in the day, and Saturday's game against the Rangers was the latest example.
The Caps started slowly and the Rangers were ready. The visitors - who entered Saturday's game with one power-play goal in 19 tries in their last half dozen games - drew a pair of calls in short succession in the first, scoring on the second of those man-advantages to take a 1-0 lead.
By the time Dmitry Orlov scored Washington's only goal of the game in the final minute of the second, it merely salved what was a 3-0 Rangers lead, built with two New York goals in a span of 59 seconds late in the middle stanza. The loss drops the Caps to 0-3-2 in five afternoon games this season, comprising nearly a third of their schedule to this juncture. Last season, Washington was 5-4-1 in matinees and 36-16-7 at night.
"It's just scheduling," says Caps captain Alex Ovechkin. "You have to be professional and be ready for everything. It's our schedule and we'll move on. You just turn the page over. It sucks we didn't get any points, but you go home, take some rest and get ready for the next one."
Seeking to take advantage of a five-game homestand after downing Buffalo in the opener on Thursday, the Caps played and looked slow and were never able to sustain anything in the way of consistent northerly flow to their game against the Rangers.
"Turnovers come from not moving your feet, from not playing the game fast, not being on your toes," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "There's a lot of reasons why turnovers happen if you're not moving, and you're getting played, and you're allowing things to close up that should be opening up as you move in. I think we just need to move a little bit better. There was some jump missing from some guys today."
Now Washington will face the Devils in another matinee, as the Caps learned soon after they left the ice following Saturday's loss to the Blueshirts. The original NHL schedule had the Caps hosting a pair of games against the Rangers this weekend, at 7 p.m. on Saturday and 5 p.m. on Sunday. The recent COVID outbreak that interrupted several East Division teams' schedules caused a ripple effect of scheduling adjustments across the Division, moving Saturday's start time up and swapping out the Rangers for the Devils as Sunday's opponents.
As the Caps were finishing Saturday's disappointing loss, plans were being made behind the scenes to move the Washington-New Jersey game into the 2 p.m. time slot initially reserved for the Philadelphia-Boston outdoor game in Lake Tahoe. When weather woes caused that game to get shifted to the evening - and the NBCSN viewing slot - the Caps and Devils were flexed up five hours.
The sudden scheduling shift gives the Caps an immediate chance to shake their matinee doldrums against the Devils, the only East Division denizen that Washington has yet to face this season. The Caps will see a lot of the Devils next weekend as well. They'll travel north to Newark to face New Jersey in a set of back-to-back games Feb. 27-28, playing at 1 p.m. om Saturday and 3 p.m. on Sunday.
New Jersey also enters Sunday's game on the heels of a Saturday afternoon setback at home, 3-2 at the hands of the Buffalo Sabres. The Devils fell down 3-0 in the first 40 minutes against Buffalo before rallying with a pair of goals in the third.
With veteran NHL head coach Lindy Ruff now behind the Devils' bench, New Jersey has tightened up in its own end. A dozen games into last season, the Devils had allowed 47 goals against. They've sliced that number down to 31 at the same stage of this season, and they rank eighth in the League with an average of 2.58 goals against per game (s/t Carter Myers).
