Oct. 14 vs. Tampa Bay Lightning at Capital One Arena
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT, ESPN
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN/Caps Radio Network
Tampa Bay Lightning (1-2-0)
Washington Capitals (2-1-0)
Fresh from a triumphant weekend in which they swept a set of back-to-back road games against the Islanders and Rangers, respectively, in New York, the Caps are back home and set to open a four-game homestand on Tuesday against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
After Tuesday’s tilt with the Bolts, a trio of Western Conference foes – Minnesota, Vancouver and Seattle – will visit Capital One Arena on this homestand, which matches Washington’s longest of the season. The Caps also have a four-game homestand in November and another in March of this season.
Both goaltenders were terrific over the weekend; Logan Thompson (34 saves on Saturday against the Islanders) and Charlie Lindgren (35 saves on Sunday against the Rangers) kept the opposition entirely at bay at 5-on-5 while earning their first victories of the season.
The Caps have yielded just one 5-on-5 goal in three games on the young season, and it was the first one scored against them, on opening night by Boston’s David Pastrnak. Since that goal in the second period of the Oct. 8 meeting with the Bruins, the Caps have surrendered three power-play goals and an empty-netter in a span of 147 minutes and 53 seconds of hockey.
“I think our game's starting to round into form,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery after the third game of the young season. “Our first game was okay. Second game, better. Third game, like [against the Rangers], we give up a little bit more than we did [Saturday against the Isles]. Probably, you would say we played better overall [Saturday].
“But sometimes you’ve got to find ways to win. You need a great performance from your goaltender. And we had three chances to make that a two nothing game … So, we did some good things. And our game, you can feel it starting to come to the form that we expect, and what's hopefully going to lead to us being able to win more games like this.”
Thompson helped the Caps to a 4-2 win over the Isles and Lindgren shutout the Rangers in New York, and Washington never trailed at any point in either game. In Sunday’s whitewash of the Blueshirts, Anthony Beauvillier supplied the lone goal – a nifty redirect of an Alex Ovechkin feed from several feet to the left of the cage – just after the midpoint of the middle period.
Almost immediately after the Beauvillier goal, Lindgren and the Caps faced back-to-back penalty killing missions separated by only 24 seconds. Lindgren made four of his 35 stops during those four minutes, and the Washington defense – which has been sturdy in the early going – combined with Lindgren to shut the door on the Rangers in the third period, enabling the Caps to bring home a full complement of four points from their first road trip of the season.
After yielding three power-play goals in the first two games of the season, Washington’s penalty killing outfit came up large on Sunday night in Manhattan, snuffing out those two New York power plays after the Beauvillier goal to usher Lindgren’s shutout into the game’s final frame.
“Yeah, because we’d given up two [power-play goals] the day before, and one in the first game as well, so we were leaking oil a little bit,” says Carbery. “And [assistant coach] Scotty [Allen] did a great job today with his meeting and his pre-scout.
“Those are two big moments in the game. To get the kill … and then we go right back, so it’s the same personnel that are going back out there to kill that penalty off again. So that was huge; hopefully that gives our group a little bit of confidence there because it was a big moment of the game to get out of that without giving one up was important.”
Lindgren’s shutout was the 10th of his NHL career and his second against the Rangers. It was his 59th victory as a Capital, tying him with Michal Neuvirth for ninth place on Washington’s all-time wins ledger.
“I think just grit and termination,” says Lindgren, of what got the Caps through those two crucial kills. “Maybe our PK wasn't necessarily happy the way the first two games have gone, and I think we wanted to dig in a little extra tonight, and that's what we did. And again, I said it all last year and pretty much since I've been here, but you look at the guys we have on our penalty kill, it's all high character guys. They're going to do whatever it takes to get the job done, and that's what those guys did tonight, and credit to them.”
Tampa Bay comes to town on the second night of a set of back-to-backs; the Bolts trimmed the Bruins in Boston on Monday afternoon, 4-3, to pick up their first win of the season. Anthony Cirelli scored a pair of goals
The Lightning dropped its first two games of the season in regulation for the first time since 2008-09, at the outset of the 2008-09 season during the short-lived, 16-game Barry Melrose bench boss era. The Lightning dropped a set of home-and home back-to-back games with the Rangers by identical 2-1 counts to start that season.
Mike Smith was in net for the season opener at home on Oct. 4, 2009, and Caps goaltending legend Olie Kolzig made his Lightning debut with a 37-save effort in a loss at Madison Square Garden the next night.
