SKATE SHAVINGS - News and Notes From Caps' Morning Skate

The Great Divide - For the first time this season, the Caps are facing a divisional foe for the second time. The Columbus Blue Jackets are in town for the first of their two visits this season, finishing up a four-game road trip in the District on Saturday night. The Caps downed the Jackets in Columbus last month, taking a 4-3 decision on Nov. 12.

"That was pretty tough, it was a back-to-back game," recalls Caps center Evgeny Kuznetsov of the first meeting between the Caps and Columbus this season. "I believe it was the first back-to-back for us this year. But Columbus always has some pretty skilled guys, and they always have good checking guys. They always have a pretty good combination of everything.
"But for us, it's very important to focus more on our game and to execute the coach's plan. If we are going to listen and execute that, we are going to have a pretty good chance to win."
Washington has fared well against divisional foes to this point of the campaign, winning five of six against fellow Metro denizens and outscoring them by a combined 24-10 in the process. The lone blemish on the Caps' divisional record is a 2-1 home ice loss to Philadelphia on Nov. 6.
More than a quarter of the way through the 2021-22 season, the Metro continues to be the League's most competitive/strongest division. Heading into Saturday's slate of NHL activity, the eight teams in the NHL's Atlantic Division have combined for 74 regulation losses and 18 overtime/shootout losses, and the eight teams in the Pacific Division have combined for the exact same numbers. The eight teams in the Central Division have combined for 75 regulation losses and 16 overtime shootout losses.
Meanwhile, over in the Metro, those eight teams have piled up only 59 regulation losses while combining for 26 overtime/shootout setbacks.
The only Metropolitan Division opponent the Caps have yet to face is the New York Islanders, and they'll visit the Isles new home on Dec. 23.
We Can Figure This Out - Saturday brought mixed news for the Caps in terms of personnel. A day after placing center Nic Dowd into the COVID-19 protocol, the Caps did the same with defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk on Saturday. Neither player will be available to the Capitals for Saturday's game against Columbus.
The Caps are hoping to have Conor Sheary and T.J. Oshie back in the lineup, both for the first time since a Nov. 20 game against the Sharks in San Jose. Pending any further positive tests - and pending Sheary and Oshie clearing any post-practice medical hurdles - that's what Caps coach Peter Laviolette has to work with as he tries to come up with a lineup for tonight's game.
Because Saturday's morning skate was optional, Laviolette didn't take the ice and he addressed media while players were still out on the ice.
"Honestly, we are working through things in the room," says Laviolette. "I know it's my go-to line in my pocket, but we are in a crazy year. I'm hopeful that some of these guys will get into the lineup; they needed to get through today. And so we're not through today; they're out there [now]. Once I go back in and I figure out where those guys are at, hopefully they'll draw in. And then from there, you hope that you're good to move forward, but you never know. You never know.
"We have had 12 different lineups since [Friday] at noontime on the table, and it changes all the time. The first nine had Dowd in it, and so you scratch him and then you put them all off to the side and you've got to redo it again. You've got to think about penalty kill, you've got to think about power play, and it's under the assumption that we may get a couple of guys back, and so I've got to make sure that that happens. It's just different things, it's crazy."
It is and it has been, and the Caps are fervently hoping it doesn't get any crazier.
The Deep End - "Get pucks deep." It's a noted hockey cliché for sure, but clichés typically don't become clichés without containing far more than a shred of truth or of value. And getting pucks deep is never more important than it is when you're shorthanded.
This past week, the Caps were dented by a pair of goals against that might have been avoided with adherence to that philosophy. Both times, the Caps didn't get pucks deep near the end of penalty-killing missions, and both times it was turned around on them and ended up in their net.
In last Sunday's game in Carolina, Nino Niederreiter's goal came two seconds after the Caps had completed the kill, so it didn't go into the books as a power-play goal against, but it was still an avoidable circumstance.
On Thursday against the Hawks, Washington dawdled with the puck in neutral ice late in a kill, enabling the Hawks to get some fresh legs on the ice and come right back at them. Dominik Kubalik scored a power-play goal with 11 seconds left in the kill, and just four seconds after he hopped onto the ice.
"That's got nothing to do with [trying to create] offense," says Laviolette. "There are opportunities where you catch a breakaway, or you find that you can make it a 2-on-0 or a 2-on-1 - you know, you pop a puck from the coverage in the defensive zone and you get sprinting in the right direction, and the numbers are in your favor. Those two instances were not those opportunities, and so we needed to do something differently in those situations."
In just 24 games this season, the Caps have struck for four shorthanded goals, third in the NHL and two more than they managed to score in 56 games last season. When teams are having success at scoring shorthanded as the Caps are, can that sometimes lead to some bad habits in terms of cheating for shorthanded offense?
"Listen, I can't speak to those two instances that you're talking about," says Laviolette. "All I know is that the puck needs to go down the ice. We're at the end of the kill and we just need to ice it down, and that's it. We've addressed it in the room, and we move on from there.
"I think oftentimes those opportunities that present themselves to score a goal come from good defense, and doing the right thing defensively in our end, which leads to a quick transition or a quick counter, a quick attack, a quick break to offense, and you have a chance of scoring a goal."
In The Nets - Ilya Samsonov gets the net tonight for Washington, making his fifth start in the team's last six games. On the season, Samsonov is 9-1-1 with three shutouts, a 2.52 GAA and a .915 save pct. His lone regulation loss of the season came on Tuesday in Florida when he made a career-high 46 saves in a 5-4 Washington loss. That game marked the first time in more than 14 years that the Capitals permitted upwards of 50 shots on goal in a game.
In two career starts against Columbus, Samsonov is 2-0-0 with a 1.95 GAA and a .930 save pct.
Two nights after making his NHL debut in Dallas in a 3-2 loss to the Stars, Daniil Tarasov gets a second straight start for the Jackets tonight in D.C. Despite allowing an early goal in his debut, Tarasov settled in nicely and stopped 34 of 37 shots he faced in his debut.
The 22-year-old Tarasov was the Jackets' third-round pick (86th overall) in the 2017 NHL Draft. He began his North American career late last season, after the KHL campaign concluded, when he got into six games with AHL Cleveland.
Earlier in the week, Columbus summoned Tarasov from Cleveland when both Joonas Korpisalo and Elvis Merzlikins became ill. Tarasov was 5-2-2 with a 2.98 GAA and an .897 save pct. in nine games with the Monsters before his recall.
All Lined Up - Here's how we expect the Capitals and the Blue Jackets to look on Saturday night in the District when the two teams meet for the second time this season:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 92-Kuznetsov, 43-Wilson
62-Hagelin, 20-Eller, 21-Hathaway
73-Sheary, 24-McMichael, 77-Oshie
47-Malenstyn, 59-Protas, 49-Leason
Defensemen
42-Fehervary, 74-Carlson
9-Orlov, 3-Jensen
52-Irwin, 2-Schultz
Goaltenders
30-Samsonov
41-Vanecek
Extras
10-Sprong
23-Sgarbossa
38-Cholowski
Injured
19-Backstrom (hip, week-to-week)
26-Dowd (COVID-19 protocol)

39-Mantha (upper body, indefinite)
57-van Riemsdyk (COVID-19 protocol)
COLUMBUS
Forwards
28-Bjorkstrand, 38-Jenner, 93-Voracek
14-Nyquist, 34-Sillinger, 16-Domi,
50-Robinson, 7-Kuraly, 42-Texier
59-Chinakhov, 17-Danforth, 15-Hoffman
Defensemen
8-Werenski, 22-Bean
44-Gavrikov, 2-Peake
5-Bayreuther, 27-Boqvist
Goaltenders
40-Tarasov
90-Merzlikins
Extras
4-Harrington
53-Carlsson
96-Roslovic,
Injured
24-Gerbe (hip)
29-Laine (strained oblique)
46-Kukan (wrist)
70-Korpisalo (illness)