Caps Head South for Friday Night Clash with Canes
Winners of three straight and 10 of their last 12, the Caps take on Carolina for the first time this season
Washington makes the first of its two visits to Raleigh this season on Friday night. The Caps face the Hurricanes in the first of four meetings between the two Metropolitan Division rivals, and in the front end of a set of back-to-back games. The Caps return home immediately afterward to host the Sabres on Saturday.
The Caps carry a three-game winning streak with them to Carolina. They hit the 30-game plateau on Tuesday night in Washington, downing Detroit by a 6-2 score. Alex Ovechkin had a hat trick and Nicklas Backstrom dealt out four assists, just the second time those two achievements have occurred in the same game; the first time was five years and a day previously.
Washington got T.J. Oshie back in the lineup after an 11-game absence on Tuesday, and the Caps may get Tom Wilson back for Friday's match against the Canes. Wilson missed the last three games with an upper body ailment, but practiced on Wednesday with his teammates.
The Capitals have been playing quite well for much longer than the life of their three-game winning streak, winning 10 of their last 12 overall. Contributions from up and down the lineup have fueled that run; Ovechkin has a 12-game scoring streak, and Brett Connolly has a five-game run. Both players are one game shy of matching career bests.
Goaltending has also been solid for the Caps, and the team's defensemen have contributed offensively at a breakneck pace. But one of the elements that have helped propel the Caps over these last dozen games has been the play of the team's fourth line of Dmitrij Jaskin, Nic Dowd and Travis Boyd. That trio has not only driven possession and been a consistent offensive-zone presence, it has also created scoring chances and has finished a fair number of them. In a league where many teams are currently struggling to satisfactorily fill out the bottom six of their respective forward rotations, the Caps are deriving a lot of value from this line of late.
"It's of huge value," says Caps coach Todd Reirden. "I think if you look at the league over the last five years, you've seen the importance of the third line has been a lot of the discussion over the last couple of years. And certainly we were a major beneficiary of that last year in winning the Stanley Cup if you look at Lars Eller and the impact that he had.
"So now it's just continuing to move forward into fourth lines that can add. The days of just having a fourth-line guy that would be your tough guy, that's kind of gone away in probably the last three years anyway. And then it went to, 'Okay, your fourth line has got to be good checkers and they've got to be good penalty-kill guys.' And I think now where we're headed is that if you can get offensive production from that fourth line, you become a very difficult team to match up against."
The Dowd unit has totaled more goals (six) and points (19) over the last nine games than Carolina's current fourth line has had all season (five goals and 11 points in 60 man-games). The Caps' fourth line has gradually earned more ice time, and Reirden isn't worried about that trio occasionally being on the ice against other teams' better lines.
"That's been the fun part that I've enjoyed about this little run that we've been on," says Reirden, "is coaching this team and being able to put guys out in different situations and control different match-ups, and not be afraid of other match-ups and really take advantage of it. It's a luxury as a coach if you can have that type of depth, and credit all goes to how our players have bought in and taken advantage of their opportunities."
The Canes will be playing for the second time in as many nights on Friday, and for the third time in four nights as well. Carolina comes home to host the Caps a night after suffering a 6-4 setback at the hands of the Habs in Montreal.
Carolina roared out of the gates to a 4-0-1 start, and the tandem of Curtis McElhinney and Petr Mrazek improved the team's goaltending, which had been a problematic area last season. But the Canes have regressed since, mainly because of a lack of scoring, another issue that has vexed them over the years. Carolina has not finished in the top half of the league in goal scoring since it concluded the lockout-abbreviated '12-13 campaign at 13th in the NHL.
In finishing 23rd in the league in scoring in 2017-18, Carolina had 10 players reach the double-digit level in goals last season, but four of them departed via trades or free agency over the summer. Those four players - Jeff Skinner, Elias Lindholm, Derek Ryan and Noah Hanifin - combined for 65 goals for the Canes last season.
Although Carolina got its leading '18-19 goal scorer - Micheal Ferland with 11 - in one of those trades, the players the Hurricanes lost have combined to score 44 goals thus far this season to just 14 goals for the players coming to Carolina. As a result, the Canes have dipped to 30th in the league in scoring this season. Averaging 2.45 goals per contest, the Hurricanes are ahead of only the Los Angeles Kings (2.19) this season.
