Netminding Decisions Coming for Caps

For most of the last decade, the foundation of the Washington Capitals has been a consistently stellar offensive attack that features a lethal power play unit. The Caps have finished in the top 10 in the NHL in goals scored in each of the last six seasons, finishing second in 2019-20. Washington's power play dipped to 12th in the circuit in 2018-19 and fell further to 17th last season, but that followed a run of six straight seasons in which the Caps' extra-man unit finished in the top seven in the league, leading the circuit in 2012-13 and 2014-15.

Washington has been less consistent at the other end of the ice over the same span, finishing anywhere from first (in 2016-17) to 21st (in 2011-12 and again in 2013-14) in goals against in the last decade. Since winning the Jennings Trophy for fewest goals against (2.16 per game) in 2016-17, the Caps have seen their goals against totals climb every season since, to 3.07 in 2019-20, the most they've allowed in a single season since 2006-07 when they yielded 3.35 per game.
With the top seven forwards from Washington's 2017-18 Stanley Cup championship team still on the roster, the Caps believe they'll continue to be among the league most dangerous offensive outfits in 2020-21. But general manager Brian MacLellan worked diligently to remake his blueline corps over the offseason, and he inked veteran goaltender Henrik Lundqvist to fill the netminding vacancy created by the departure - via free agency - of longtime stalwart Braden Holtby after a dozen years in the organization.
MacLellan also hired Peter Laviolette to replace Todd Reirden as Washington's head coach. Laviolette is a bench boss with a track record of significant and instant improvement at each of his four previous NHL stops.
MacLellan revamped the Washington blueline with a handful of free agent additions and a contract extension for Brenden Dillon, but the addition of Lundqvist was short-lived; the future Hall of Fame goaltender had to discontinue his training last month to undergo surgery for a heart condition that will keep him on the sidelines for the upcoming season and may ultimately spell the end of his impressive career.
Lundqvist's departure left Washington with Samsonov (26 games) and Phoenix Copley (29 games) as the only two goaltenders on the depth chart with any prior experience, not exactly ideal for a team with Stanley Cup aspirations.
With training camp almost set to get underway, the Caps put out a call for veteran netminder Craig Anderson, bringing him into camp on a professional tryout basis. The 39-year-old Anderson has been at MedStar Capitals Iceplex for Caps training camp this week, along with Samsonov, Copley and untested rookies Vitek Vanecek and Zach Fucale. That quintet currently represents the entirety of the Capitals' organizational goaltending depth.

"We've got pieces that we're really excited to get into training camp and see with the young goaltenders that we have in place, as well as bringing in a guy like Craig Anderson and his experience and adding him to the mix," said Laviolette, just ahead of the start of camp. "I think it's going to be a great battle through the course of the training camp.
"There's going to be an evaluation period that goes on with this, and then we're going to have to make decisions. But we still have a lot of confidence in the people that we have in place, even though Henrik won't be with us."
Samsonov was splendid as a rookie last season, posting a 16-6-2 mark with a 2.55 GAA and a .913 save pct. in 26 games. But the 23-year-old Russian suffered an upper body injury prior to last summer's playoffs, taking him out of the team's goaltending picture during the Caps' brief foray in the playoff bubble in Toronto. Now fully healed from that injury, Samsonov is expected to be Washington's No. 1 option in net for the foreseeable future, continuing a long line of home-drafted and developed goaltenders that stretches back to 1989 when the team drafted Olie Kolzig in the first round.
Samsonov has never played more than 37 games in any single season of his career, which includes four campaigns in the KHL and a season at AHL Hershey, where he minded the crease for 37 contests in 2018-19. The jury is out on how much of a workload he can reasonably be expected to shoulder.
Vanecek has spent five seasons as a pro in North America, the last four of them with AHL Hershey where he was twice named to the AHL All-Star Game. He has appeared in at least 31 AHL games in each of the last four seasons, posting a 71-43-16 mark with 11 shutouts, a 2.59 GAA and a .906 save pct. over that span. Lundqvist's sudden departure opens the door for him to get his first NHL experience this season.
Chosen with the Caps' second-round (39th overall) pick in the 20014 NHL Draft, Vanecek was the fourth goaltender taken in that draft, following Mason McDonald (Calgary, 34th overall), Thatcher Demko (Vancouver, 36th) and Alex Nedeljkovic (Carolina, 37th). Thus far, Demko (37 games) and Nedeljkovic (six games) are the only ones of that quartet to have seen NHL action.
"I'm trying to work hard," says Vanecek, who celebrated his 25th birthday on Saturday. "I've been here five years, and I want to get my first NHL game."
Washington signed Copley as an undrafted free agent in 2014, then dealt him to St. Louis in the trade that brought T.J. Oshie to D.C. Copley later returned to the Caps in the 2017 Kevin Shattenkirk trade, and he garnered the lion's share of his NHL experience when he served as Holtby's understudy throughout the 2018-19 season, posting a 16-7-3 mark with a 2.90 GAA and a .905 save pct.
Now nearing his 29th birthday, Copley was supplanted by Samsonov last season, spending all of 2019-20 with Hershey. He has two years left on a three-year pact he signed with Washington.

Anderson debuted with Chicago in 2002-03, and has also tended the twine for Florida, Colorado and Ottawa over the course of a 17-year NHL career. He has been with the Senators for virtually the last decade, leading the Sens to overtime of Game 7 in the Eastern Conference Final against Pittsburgh in 2017. In each of his nine full seasons with the Sens, Anderson logged more minutes in the crease than any other goaltender on the club.
Anderson's last night in the crease was in Ottawa's season finale back on March 11. Since then, he's been spending time with his family before recently ramping up his conditioning in case an opportunity presented itself for him to continue his playing career.
"I took a little break from hockey, got into coaching baseball with my little guy," says Anderson. "I started to be a family man and do the day-to-day with the family, so you put hockey on the back burner and it drives that passion to drive back in. And then about four months ago, I got back into the gym pretty hard. I tried to stay in the best shape I could good as far as doing off-ice stuff. The way things played out, it was tough to get ice and tough to get to where you need to be. This is the first week of getting back into it and seeing where I'm at on the ice."
During his 17 seasons in the league, Anderson has appeared in the Stanley Cup playoffs only five times, but he has performed well on that stage. He owns a 2.35 GAA and a .929 save pct. in postseason play, along with a .652 quality start pct. Anderson's playoff record is 23-22.
Over the course of his 17-year career, Anderson owns a 289-251-69 record in 648 appearances, with 42 shutouts, a 2.84 GAA and a .913 save pct.
The 25-year-old Fucale rounds out the quintet. After backstopping the QMJHL Halifax Mooseheads to a Memorial Cup championship in 2013, Fucale - a native of Quebec - was the first goaltender chosen in the 2013 NHL Draft, going to Montreal early in the second round (36th overall).
Fucale turned pro in 2015-16, and after three seasons in the Canadiens' system, he signed with Vegas in the summer of 2018. Fucale spent last season in Tampa Bay's system before inking a free agent deal with the Caps this past August. He has bounced between the AHL and the ECHL for the last five seasons, and he has yet to see NHL action.
One of the main questions confronting Laviolette and his staff in this abbreviated training camp is the identity of Samsonov's goaltending partner for the rapidly approaching 56-game season and determining how much of a workload each will carry. Then there's the matter of which goaltender will occupy the No. 3 spot on the depth chart, which would be a berth on the club's traveling taxi squad, a new and temporary feature to NHL rosters this season. The fourth and fifth netminders will almost certainly comprise the goaltending tandem for AHL Hershey, which is slated to open its season on Feb. 5.
There are complicating factors at play as well. In the event he is unable to land the job as Samsonov's partner or the taxi squad berth, Anderson would seem to be an unlikely candidate for one of the Hershey netminding slots at this stage of his career. Copley's salary cap hit ($1.1 million) is the highest of the group, and that could keep him in Hershey given the Caps' tight salary cap situation. And Vanecek would require waivers to be sent back to the Bears for a sixth season in the minors.

"I think the goaltenders are in for a real battle, and we're trying to evaluate them," says Laviolette.
All five goaltenders saw duty in Thursday's initial scrimmage, which consisted of two periods of "normal" hockey and a period of situational play, including special teams, 4-on-4 and 3-on-3. Vanecek was arguably the most impressive of the group that day, while Anderson showed some understandable rust.
"I thought he was good," said Laviolette of Vanecek's scrimmage outing. "We were talking about it; he was actually tested a few times I thought, and he did well. That's why we're evaluating the goalies. We're trying get them in there and we're watching them in practice and trying to get them in the games. Again, with the training camp so short and not having the exhibition season that we usually have, it makes it a little more challenging. But we're giving everybody a good look. I thought he was good tonight."
That evaluation of the Caps' goaltending crew will continue on Sunday afternoon when the goaltending corps will get its final opportunity to impress in a scrimmage environment. With the rest of their roster looking strong and deep on paper, it's imperative for the Caps to come up with a formidable goaltending tandem for the varsity squad.
"I think there is some confidence in the guys we do have in camp here," Laviolette reiterates. "It's a different situation with regard to the shortened camp - not having extensive practices and not having the amount of exhibition games that we typically do, so the [scrimmages are] as close as we're going to get to one team playing another team. With that, you get a chance to evaluate the goaltenders and see how they do. It's a little bit more challenging than in past years, but again there is confidence in the goaltenders that we do have here. So we're looking at them and we'll make decisions by the end of camp."
With the season getting underway on Thursday in Buffalo, those decisions are imminent, and Sunday's scrimmage will go along way toward informing them.