Caps Visit Vegas
Caps take on Golden Knights on Saturday night in Vegas in middle match of three-game western tour
Washington's three-game trip out west continues on Saturday night in Vegas when the Caps go up against the Golden Knights in the middle match of the trip. The Caps started out the trip in James Brown fashion, on the good foot, with a 4-0 whitewash of the Arizona Coyotes on Thursday night at Tempe's Mullett Arena.
Darcy Kuemper stopped all 26 shots - a dozen of them in the third period - and Dylan Strome scored twice to lead the Caps to victory in their first ever visit to Arizona's new and temporary desert home. Both Kuemper and Strome are former Coyotes, and Kuemper's shutout was the 30th of his NHL career, his League-leading fifth of the season, and the fourth of his career against his former employer.
Strome is also an ex-Coyote, and he now has five goals in 11 games against the team that drafted him third overall in the 2015 NHL Draft.
Washington showed no signs of weariness on Thursday a day after a cross continent flight of nearly five hours, winning for the ninth time in its last 10 road games.
"I thought it was good," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "From the travel [Wednesday] and the schedule - I think we're moving into our fifth game in eight nights, so [Thursday] was four in six - I thought the guys came out hard and played pretty hard for 60 minutes."
The Caps dictated the play from the start, dominating the first period in terms of territory and possession, and getting the only goal Kuemper would require when Strome tipped home a Dmitry Orlov one-timer from the right point just 3:03 into the first period.
Washington also finally solved Coyotes goaltender Karel Vejmelka, who had limited the Caps to just four goals - two of them on the power play - in three previous starts against them. Strome scored again in the third period, and his two goals bookended second period strikes from Sonny Milano and Tom Wilson, the latter of which came on a Washington power play.
Wilson had a goal and an assist, and Nicklas Backstrom started each of the first two periods with excellent scoring chances. Backstrom started the forechecking play that resulted in Milano's goal, and the Milano-Backstrom-Wilson trio was dominant in terms of driving play and possession in Thursday's game. That line seems to be getting better with each game together.
"For sure," echoes Milano. "Yeah, definitely better than our first game together. I think we've started to click a little bit and to understand where we're going to be on the ice, so it's definitely coming along."
Washington had been dented for five goals against on shots from the point and with traffic - some deflected, some not - in its previous two games, and it turned that tide on Thursday night, too. Strome's first goal was a deflection of a Dmitry Orlov shot, and Wilson's power play goal was a deflection of an Orlov center point drive.
"We talked about that," says Strome. "We wanted to clean that up in front of our net and give our goalies a chance to save them. Our goalies are really good, and usually if they see it there, they're going to save it. So when we give up a couple of goals like that, it's nice to get some the other way, where we tip and screen their goalie. It's never fun for a goalie, and happy we were able to do that tonight."
"We talked about it," confirms Laviolette. "There's definitely things that we could have done better. Even going back to the Islander game [on Monday], there were a couple there as well. So it was something that we talked about, trying to clean it up a little bit; tie up a little bit better, box out a little bit better, block more shots out high, so I thought our guys did a pretty good job."
Aside from the spring of 2018 when the Caps won two of the three games they played here in the Stanley Cup Final - including the Cup-clinching Game 5 on June 7, 2018 - Vegas has proven to be a tough town for the Caps during the Golden Knights' half decade of NHL existence. The Caps are still seeking their first regular season win here; they own a 0-3-1 record in their four previous visits to Vegas, and they earned that single point the last time they were here, on April 20, 2022 in a 4-3 overtime loss.
The Golden Knights enter Saturday's game in a tie for the top spot in the NHL's Pacific Division standings, even with their fellow recent expansion cousins, the Seattle Kraken. For the Golden Knights, Saturday's game with the Capitals marks the end of a seven-game homestand, and it also marks the front end of a set of back-to-backs for Vegas. On Sunday, the Golden Knights head south to Mullett Arena for a date with the Coyotes, the opening contest of a six-game road trip that will take Vegas to three different time zones.
The Golden Knights have spent some of the recent weeks of the season living off the standings equity they built in a 13-2-0 start to the season. They've gone 15-14-2 since, and they'll enter Saturday's game with a three-game regulation losing streak for the first time this season. Most recently, the Knight absorbed a 3-2 loss to the Detroit Red Wings here on Thursday night.
