Coming Into Los Angeles – The Caps are set to close out the month of November with a set of back-to-back games in Southern California. First up is a Wednesday night date with the Kings in Los Angeles. The Caps will bus to Anaheim immediately after for a Thursday meeting with the Ducks at Honda Center.
The Kings have zipped out to a strong start this season, more than holding their own with Vegas and Vancouver in the top-heavy Pacific Division. A well-rounded and balanced Los Angeles squad leads the NHL in goals for per game (4.00) as well as goals against per game (2.37), and it is fourth best in the League at shot suppression, allowing an average of 27.7 shots on net per night.
Special teams wise, the Kings sit atop the NHL’s penalty killing ledger with a kill rate of 89.4%, but they’re merely middle of the pack on the power play. Los Angeles’ extra man unit is clicking at a 20.8 percent rate, ranking 14th in the League.
“There's a lot of areas of their game that they're excelling at this year,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery of the Kings. “Down the middle, defensively, they’re as good a team as there is in the National Hockey League, with their neutral zone, with the way that they defend in the defensive zone, and their strength down the middle.
“[Their centers] like [Philip] Danault, [Anze] Kopitar, and [PL] Dubois will be low forwards in the defensive zone, and they make it really difficult on you not only to win pucks, but also to gain any type of advantage to get to the inside and beat them 1-on-1, win puck battles. They’ve got good sticks, so they're a handful, and you can see from the film why they're having success this year.”
In a nutshell, the Kings are as good as any team the Caps have faced this season. Fifteen nights ago in Washington, the Caps rose to the challenge of facing one of the NHL’s elite teams, shutting out the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights 3-0 at Capital One Arena. They’ll try to meet the challenge of conquering the Kings tonight in L.A.
“It's as challenging of a game as we've had this year,” says Carbery. “So it's a good measuring stick. It's a good challenge for us to come in on the road, having played a little bit better in San Jose [on Monday]. We didn't get the result, but now we get to measure ourselves against the league's best, and that's what you want as a player, and as a team.
“So to come in here, in a tough building to play in, against one of the league's best teams, it's a good challenge for us and I'm looking forward to seeing our guys rise to that challenge.”
More Than This – Now more than 20 percent of the way into the season, the Caps are still scuffling to find some level of offensive consistency. They rank 31st in the League in goals per game, and they’re squandering some good goaltending and some solid defensive efforts. Aside from Dylan Strome and Tom Wilson, they’re not getting any consistent production from their top six, and their power play has been anemic, ranking last in the league.
In Monday’s 2-1 loss to the Sharks in San Jose, the Caps slowly seized momentum of the game in the second period, trailing 1-0 at that point. Washington put together a series of good shifts in the offensive zone, hemming the Sharks in their end of the ice for long stretches. But all that zone time translated into one goal, an Evgeny Kuznetsov tally that came late in the second period, with all five Sharks skaters on the ice for at least 90 seconds at that point.
“There was a ton of good shifts,” says Carbery. “A bunch of stuff that we looked at from quality shot generation and traffic. But we’ve just got to find more ways. We’ve got to look at it. Can we get more pucks inside? Can we get a little bit more traffic? Can we find a way to finish in some areas? We worked on it [Tuesday] in practice, we talk about it, we look at some different options from the film, and just continue to build, and work at it and get better.”
The Caps want to be a puck possession team, and they have stretches where they are able to camp out in the opposition’s end of the ice, as they did during that middle period on Monday in San Jose. But they also have stretches where they spend to much time circling the zone on the perimeter, failing to get pucks to the interior where they can get better quality looks at the net, and potentially some tips, some rebounds and some bounces.
The Caps are 9-0-1 when they score as many as three goals in a game, and they’re 1-6-1 when they don’t. So, how do they get to three on a more consistent basis?
“I thought we actually played pretty well,” says Caps’ center Nic Dowd of Monday’s loss to the Sharks. “We did a lot of things well in the offensive zone, but obviously it comes down to special teams in the end. We give up a power-play goal, and our power play hits the post three times. I think if we score early on that power play, maybe things change.
“But even if that doesn’t happen, at 5-on-5, when you have those opportunities, you’ve got to find a way to score. But also, you’ve got to be a little bit careful on zone time. Because you can have a lot of zone time and have it be on the perimeter, which sometimes tends to happen to our group. We can have a lot of zone time, but not getting a lot of Grade A [scoring chances], or causing a lot of second opportunities, and making the goalie make saves that he’s uncomfortable with.
“And I think we had a bit of that [Monday] night. We controlled the play a lot, but we didn’t do a good enough job of getting to the guts of the ice to get those Grade A scoring chances. I think that’s how we’re going to score our three goals. Obviously, you can hope that the power play kicks in with one. But at the same time, if we continue to play like when we have that [offensive] zone time, we just have to find a way to make that time count, and not just look at it as, ‘Oh, we had [offensive] zone time, but we never really got to the interior of the ice and made anything happen.”
Despite their ongoing offensive woes, the Caps’ still boast the third best points percentage (.611) in the Metropolitan Division entering Wednesday’s NHL action. But Washington is also coming off successive regulation losses for the first time this season, and it is only a single standings point clear of seventh-place in the tightly packed Metro.
While the Caps absolutely need to score more to win, playing with a lead would also be beneficial. With 603 minutes and 49 seconds worth of lead time in its 19 games this season, Los Angeles ranks second in the NHL. The Kings have scored the game’s first goal a dozen times, tied for eighth in the League.
Washington has played with a lead for 280 minutes and 48 seconds in its 18 games, ranking 27th in lead time. The Caps have scored first in just six of 18 contests; only New Jersey (four) has scored the game’s first goal fewer times than Washington.
“It for sure doesn’t help when you’re chasing the game, especially for the full 60 minutes,” says Caps’ forward Connor McMichael. “When you’re chasing the game, you’ve kind of got to change up how you’re playing; you’ve got to try and attack more, and you might end up giving up more than you want. But yeah, the first goal is huge for sure, and just getting out on the right foot. I think we’re due for a game where we have a full 60 minutes where the pucks are going our way, and we’re finding the back of the net.”
Time Spent In Los Angeles – Dowd was a Los Angeles draft choice; he was selected in the seventh round (No. 198 overall) in the 2009 NHL Draft. Upon completing his collegiate career at St. Cloud St., Dowd turned pro in the L.A. organization, and he first ascended to the NHL with the Kings in March of 2016, after a 140-game AHL apprenticeship.
After logging the first 91 games of his NHL career with the Kings, Dowd was dealt to Vancouver six years ago next week. He has been back in the area to face the Kings as an opponent multiple times since then, and he paused to reflect on his time here and how the feeling of facing his old club has evolved over those six years.
“It is interesting, you know?” says Dowd. It’s strange, because I used to come back here and play against a lot of the guys that I played with here, and now I come back and there is like two guys on the team that I played with; it's just a completely different team.
“But I think I look at it as, I'm just such a different player now. And I’m a much more mature person. But yeah, I enjoy coming back. My wife enjoyed it here. I think at that time, I wasn't mature enough to figure out the situation, and to understand how to make the best of it. Fortunately, I ended up in Vancouver and Washington, and I was able to grow as a person and as a player in this organization. It’s just funny to look at how much life has changed since we've been here. Two kids, two dogs, different homes, different part of our lives.”
In The Nets – Charlie Lindgren gets the net for the Caps tonight in Los Angeles in the front end of the back-to-back. Lindgren has enjoyed an excellent month of November, winning four of his five starts (4-1-0) while forging a 2.21 GAA, and a .934 save pct. and notching his first shutout as a member of the Capitals (Nov. 14 vs. Vegas).
Lindgren will be making his first career appearance against Los Angeles tonight.
For the Kings, we are expecting to see Cam Talbot in net. Signed to a one-year, $2 million deal as a free agent last summer, the 36-year-old Talbot has had seven different employers over the course of an 11-year career in the League. He has delivered plenty of bang for the bucks in L.A., going 10-3-1 with a shutout, a 2.02 GAA and a .931 save pct. to this point of the season.
Lifetime against Washington, Talbot is 5-7-1 with a 2.67 GAA and a .910 save pct. in 15 appearances (13 starts).
All Lined Up – Here is how we believe the Capitals and Kings might look when they take the ice in Los Angeles on Wednesday night:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 92-Kuznetsov, 43-Wilson
15-Milano, 17-Strome, 45-Phillips
21-Protas, 24-McMichael, 39-Mantha
47-Malenstyn, 26-Dowd, 96-Aube-Kubel
Defensemen
42-Fehervary, 74-Carlson
38-Sandin, 3-Jensen
6-Edmundson, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
35-Kuemper
79-Lindgren
Injured
19-Backstrom (upper body)
67-Pacioretty (torn Achilles’ tendon)
77-Oshie (upper body)
Scratches
27-Alexeyev
29-Lapierre
46-Johansen
LOS ANGELES
Forwards
55-Byfield, 11-Kopitar, 9-Kempe
22-Fiala, 24-Danault, 12-Moore
91-Grundstrom, 80-Dubois, 78-Laferriere
28-Anderson-Dolan, 61-Lewis, 34-Kaliyev
Defensemen
44-Anderson, 8-Doughty
84-Gavrikov, 3-Roy
5-Englund, 21-Spence
Goaltenders
39-Talbot
29-Copley
Injured
33-Arvidsson (lower body)
46-Lizette (undisclosed)
Scratches
7-Bjornfot
