The Heart Of Saturday Night – With a 4-2 Friday night victory over the New Jersey Devils tucked into their collective back pocket, the Caps move now to Long Island. They’ll reckon with the Islanders tonight at UBS Arena, finishing up a weekend set of back-to-backs against Metro Division rivals.
Washington is on an upward roll of 5-1-1 in its last seven games, and its only regulation loss in that stretch came at the hands of the Isles in D.C. on Nov. 2. Ex-Caps goalie Semyon Varlamov notched his 40th career shutout in that one.
Despite their improvement since a rather rugged 1-3-1 start, the Caps’ personnel situation is murky and uncertain in the wake of Friday’s win in Jersey.
Defenseman Martin Fehervary departed Friday’s game midway through the second period with a lower body injury. It’s the third straight game in which Washington has had a player depart with injury, following defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk (lower body vs. Columbus on Nov. 4) and winger Anthony Mantha (upper body vs. Florida on Nov. 8). van Riemsdyk and Mantha aren’t in New York with the team, and the Caps recalled defenseman Dylan McIlrath from AHL Hershey on Saturday afternoon.
“We placed Marty on [injured reserve], so he’ll be out through next week at least,” said Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery late Saturday afternoon. “And in the according transaction, we recalled Dylan McIlrath.
“We’ll warm him up and see where it goes from there. We have seven [defensemen] now active, but we’ll see [whether McIlrath plays tonight or not] depending on some other guys.”
Rasmus Sandin left Friday night’s game in New Jersey very late in the third period, but he did return to take a shift.
“He’s good today,” says Carbery, asked specifically about Sandin. “He woke up, he’s all good, just a little bit of a sore face. So we’ll see if he can go.”
With goaltender Darcy Kuemper ailing, Hunter Shepard was recalled from Hershey on Friday. Charlie Lindgren was sturdy in the Washington nets again on Friday in New Jersey, and Shepard will get the start in Saturday’s game against the Islanders.
With Kuemper unavailable tonight, the Caps are missing five players from their active opening night roster, and they’ve been missing defenseman Joel Edmundson and Max Pacioretty since before that. A dozen games into the 2023-24 season, the Capitals have already accrued 48 man-games lost.
Black And Blue(line) – To address the need for a physical, crease-clearing defenseman, the Caps swung a swap with Montreal for Edmundson on July 1. But in his first training camp with the Caps, Edmundson broke his hand during a camp scrimmage on Sept. 24, and he has been sidelined since.
In Edmundson’s absence, the Caps have rotated a trio of young defenders in and out of the left side of their third blueline pairing. Alex Alexeyev played in five of the Caps’ first 11 games, while Hardy Häman Aktell and Lucas Johansen each got into three games.
With van Riemsdyk departing the scene in the middle of the 11th game, Alexeyev and Häman Aktell both got into the lineup for Wednesday’s game against Florida. Last night in New Jersey, Häman Aktell and Johansen comprised Washington’s third pairing.
Ahead of Friday’s date with the Devils, Carbery was asked about the three-player platoon on Washington’s third pairing.
“There’s been stretches of real positive play from each guy that’s gone into that spot, and the there’s been some regression in games,” says Carbery. “And so what we’re looking for, as hard as it is, is [be] reliable, and try to be consistent – consistently reliable – and give us minutes where you can break a puck out, you can advance a puck out of our zone, and you defend hard and well in the defensive zone and off the rush.
“If you can do that for 12, 13, 14 minutes, now we can build on that. And if you can stack those games up and those shifts, now we can build on that, and you can get in a rhythm of two, three, or four games. What we’ve seen is, we’ve seen that reliability for one game, sometimes two games. And then we’ve seen a huge hiccup in the third game, to where now we’ve got to take a step back and see if somebody else can deliver in those minutes, and get on a consistent run. And that’s sort of what we’re still looking for in game 11 and 12.”
With Fehervary unavailable tonight against the Islanders, all three players will be in the lineup in the same game for the first time. None of the young trio of defenders has even half a season’s worth of NHL experience as of yet; with 39 career games played, Alexeyev is the grizzled vet of the troika. Johansen has played six games, and Häman Aktell has played five. All three are still seeking their first NHL goal.
In his six games this season, Alexeyev has played fewer than 10 minutes three times, and his 16-minute outing on Nov. 4 against Columbus represents the highest single-game total for the three defenders. Häman Aktell has yet to crack the 13-minute mark in his five NHL games and Johansen – who appears likely to play consecutive games for the first time in his NHL career tonight – has been between 13 and 14 minutes in each of his three games in 2023-24.
At the other end of the spectrum is veteran defenseman John Carlson, who is in his 15th NHL season and is closing in on Calle Johansson (983) for the all-time lead among Washington defensemen in games played. Carlson has played in 939 NHL games.
Carlson skated a team high 29:39 in Friday’s win over the Devils, the fourth time this season that he has eclipsed the 28-minute mark in ice time. His average ice time this season is now 26:12, tops among all skaters in the NHL. Carlson’s single-season career high in average ice time is 25:04, and his career average is 23:28.
Veterans Carlson, Sandin and Nick Jensen are likely to see heavy duty for the second straight night tonight; Sandin skated 25:29 and Jensen 24:37 on Friday. Both of those figures represent single-game highs for the season for those players.
“Well, it’s going to be challenging,” says Carbery. “And I think that’s where it’s on all of us to not only help the guys that played a lot of minutes last night, but help the younger guys back there get through the game and have success tonight. And that’s not just on them, stepping up in a big moment in a back-to-back, but also our forwards doing what they can to help out in certain situations. So we all have a responsibility in that.”
In The Nets – Two and a half weeks ago in Newark, goalie Hunter Shepard made his NHL debut against the Devils, earning a 6-4 victory with an 18-save performance. Tonight, he gets the net for the Caps against the Islanders. In five starts with Hershey this season, Shepard is 4-1-0 with a 2.35 GAA and a .910 save pct.
For the Islanders, old friend Semyon Varlamov gets the net tonight. Although Ilya Sorokin has shouldered a larger burden of the netminding chores to date for the Islanders, Varlamov has been more effective. In four starts this season, he is 2-2-0 with a 1.77 GAA and a gaudy .950 save pct. Each of Varlamov’s two victories this season has come via the shutout route; he blanked the Caps in Washington on 32 saves on Nov. 2. That game is both New York’s most recent win and the Capitals’ most recent regulation loss.
Lifetime against the team that chose him in the first round (23rd overall) of the 2006 NHL Entry Draft, Varlamov is 8-11-3 with three shutouts, a 2.50 GAA and a .922 save pct. in 22 appearances, all starts.
All Lined Up – Here is how we believe the Capitals and Islanders might look when they take the ice in Belmont on Saturday night:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 92-Kuznetsov, 43-Wilson
15-Milano, 17-Strome, 77-Oshie
21-Protas, 24-McMichael, 45-Phillips
47-Malenstyn, 26-Dowd, 96-Aube-Kubel
Defensemen
27-Alexeyev, 74-Carlson
38-Sandin, 3-Jensen
46-Johansen, 4-Häman Aktell
Goaltenders
31-Shepard
79-Lindgren
Injured
6-Edmundson (hand)
19-Backstrom (upper body)
35-Kuemper (undisclosed)
39-Mantha (upper body)
42-Fehervary (lower body)
57-van Riemsdyk (lower body)
67-Pacioretty (torn Achilles’ tendon)
Scratches
25-McIlrath
29-Lapierre
NEW YORK
Forwards
13-Barzal, 14-Horvat, 10-Holmstrom
18-Engvall, 29-Nelson, 21-Palmieri
27-Lee, 44-Pageau, 20-Fasching
17-Martin, 53-Cizikas, 15-Clutterbuck
Defensemen
20-Aho, 8-Dobson
28-Romanov, 6-Pulock
4-Bolduc, 24-Mayfield
Goaltenders
40-Varlamov
30-Sorokin
Injured
3-Pelech (lower body)
Scratches
16-Gauthier
26-Wahlstrom
