SKATE SHAVINGS - News and Notes From Caps' Morning Skate

Bottom Of The Sea - The Seattle Kraken are in the District tonight, making their first ever appearance in D.C. in the opener of a five-game road trip and a set of back-to-back contests. The Kraken will continue on to Carolina on Sunday and will then loop back north to face the Eastern Conference's three Canadian clubs.

The Caps faced the first-year expansion Kraken for the first time ever on Nov. 21 in Seattle, finishing a four-game California trip with a visit to the Emerald City tacked onto the end of the journey. The Kraken handed the Caps just their third regulation loss of the season on that Sunday night in Seattle, a 5-2 setback.
The Kraken currently occupies the basement of the Pacific Division standings and it sits 15 points south of seventh-place San Jose heading into Saturday's slate of NHL activity. While the Kraken will finish well below the first-season level of the NHL's previous expansion entry in Vegas, Seattle's 17 wins to date more than doubles the Caps' first-year total of eight victories in 80 games (8-67-5) back in 1974-75.
Keep On Going - Washington finished last season with a 36-15-5 record in the abbreviated 56-game season, a mark that resulted in 77 points and a second-place finish in the temporarily cobbled East Division. The Caps finished with the same number of points as Pittsburgh, but they lost the tiebreaker to officially finish second.
This season, the Caps are 56 games into what will be the NHL's first 82-game season since 2018-19. Washington is 10 points back of where it was at the 56-game mark of last season, but this year's model has seen a significant increase in the team's total of man-games lost to injury. The 2020-21 Caps lost a total of just 72 man-games to injury in those 56 contests, but the '21-22 crew has nearly tripled that figure already, sitting at 207 man-games lost heading into tonight's game.
Washington has played 112 regular season games now in less than 14 months, since the '20-21 season got underway on Jan. 14, 2021. That's more than they would have played under "normal" circumstances in any 14-month span, and the Caps still have to grind their way through 26 more regular season games in the next 56 nights, beginning with tonight's tilt vs. the Kraken.
"It's definitely been a bit of a grind," says Caps center Nic Dowd. "And I think our team has been going through a lot, too. We've had a lot of COVID issues, we've had a lot of injuries, we've had a lot of guys in and out of the lineup, guys not on road trips, a lot of different lineups and a lot of different call-ups. And individually too, guys are dealing with a lot of bumps and bruises, and it's a long season.
"But it definitely doesn't feel like we've played [the equivalent of] last season already. But that's just part of the NHL schedule. That's what every team deals with and everyone knows what's coming, so it's nothing new."
The Grand Tour - Until this season, Kraken captain Mark Giordano had known only one NHL employer, the Calgary Flames. The 38-year-old Toronto native went undrafted as an amateur, debuting with the Flames on Jan. 30, 2006 in St. Louis, the first of seven NHL games he played that season.
Giordano's career stalled enough in its early stages that he spent the 2007-08 season skating with Moscow Dynamo of Russia's KHL. He returned to Calgary the following season and entrenched himself as a blueline mainstay there, winning the Norris Trophy as the League's top defenseman in 2018-19. Before joining the Kraken in last summer's expansion draft, Giordano spent 15 seasons with the Flames.
Tonight in Washington against the Capitals, Giordano suits up for the 1,000th game of his NHL career, joining Toronto's Wayne Simmonds, who will also skate in his 1,000th game tonight when the Leafs take on Vancouver tonight. Giordano will become the 364th player and the 120th defenseman to reach the 1,000-game plateau. According to NHL stats, he will become the 27th undrafted player and the 10th undrafted defenseman to do so.
Additionally, Giordano will be the sixth player to reach the grand milestone while toiling for an expansion club, and the first to do so since Mike Foligno reached a thousand games with Florida on Jan. 7, 1994.
In The Nets - Two nights after he pitched a 36-save shutout against the Carolina Hurricanes here in D.C., Vitek Vanecek gets a second straight start against Seattle, the club that briefly employed him last summer. The Kraken selected Vanecek from the Washington roster in the July 21 expansion draft, and the Capitals sent their second-round choice in the 2023 NHL Draft to Seattle to reacquire the Czech goaltender exactly one week later.
Last weekend, the Caps sent Vanecek to AHL Hershey on a conditioning stint, to get him some game action and allow him to regain his timing at that level. On Sunday against the Utica Comets, he started and went the distance, stopping 21 of 23 shots in a losing effort.
A night later, he was back in the District backing up Ilya Samsonov against Toronto. But after the Leafs struck for three goals on 10 shots in the first frame, Vanecek was summoned to appear in a relief role. He stopped 16 of 17 shots, but absorbed a hard luck loss in the game.
Three nights after that, Vanecek made his first NHL start since Feb. 1, blanking the Canes. Despite missing a month of action, Vanecek has picked up right where he left off at the time of his injury. In his last nine games, Vanecek has fashioned a 5-3-0 record with three shutouts to go along with a 1.55 GAA and a .946 save pct.
Vanecek faced the Kraken in Seattle on Nov. 21, taking the loss and yielding four goals on 30 shots.
Former Caps goaltender - and 2018 Stanley Cup champion - Philipp Grubauer has handled the lion's share of Seattle's netminding chores this season, the Kraken is saving him for the Carolina contest tomorrow night in Raleigh. The Caps will see former Sens and Panthers goaltender Chris Driedger tonight.
Driedger spent four partial seasons in the NHL before finally staying on Florida's roster for the entirety of last season, and then being chosen by the Kraken in the expansion draft. In 16 appearances (13 starts) with Seattle this season, Driedger is 5-8-0 with a 3.28 GAA and an .891 save pct. Tonight will mark his first career appearance against the Capitals.
All Lined Up - Here's how we believe the Caps and the Kraken might look on Saturday night in the District:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 92-Kuznetsov, 43-Wilson
39-Mantha, 19-Backstrom, 77-Oshie
24-McMichael, 20-Eller, 73-Sheary
45-Jonsson-Fjallby, 26-Dowd, 21-Hathaway
Defensemen
42-Fehervary, 74-Carlson
9-Orlov, 3-Jensen
57-van Riemsdyk, 2-Schultz
Goaltenders
41-Vanecek
30-Samsonov
Extras
6-Kempny
10-Sprong
52-Irwin
Injured/Out
62-Hagelin (upper body)
91-Snively (upper body)
SEATTLE
Forwards
19-Jarnkrok, 16-McCann, 7-Eberle
43-Blackwell, 37-Gourde, 22-Appleton
17-Schwartz, 21-Wennberg, 90-Johansson
15-Sheahan, 67-Geekie, 72-Donskoi
Defensemen
5-Giordano, 28-Soucy
24-Oleksiak, 6-Larsson
29-Dunn, 55-Lauzon
Goaltenders
60-Driedger
31-Grubauer
Extras
3-Borgen
4-Fleury
9-Donato
Injured/Out
13-Tanev (torn ACL)
25-Kuhlman (upper body)