Home, Home Again – The Caps kick off a season-high four-game homestand tonight against the Tampa Bay Lightning. After the Lightning help the Caps open the homestand tonight, a trio of Western Conference clubs follow: Minnesota, Vancouver and Seattle, respectively. The Caps have two more four-game homestands ahead on the horizon later in the season; one from Nov. 22-28 and another from March 14-22.
The Caps dropped their home opener to Boston here last Wednesday before sweeping a set of weekend back-to-backs on the road against the Islanders and Rangers, respectively.
Killing Time – Early season numbers in any sport can be fraught with the hazards of small sample sizes. But occasionally, some numbers can stand out enough to signify a different trend. That may the case with Rasmus Sandin’s early season ice time figures.
The Caps defenseman is averaging 19:39 in ice time through three games, which is right in line with the 19:11 he averaged while playing the full slate of 82 games last season and it’s also in line with his career average of 18:43 per game over 312 NHL contests.
What stands out is the shorthanded ice time he has picked up in all three games to date. Sandin enters tonight’s game with 4:10 in shorthanded ice time in three games, an average of 1:23 per contest. Last season, Sandin averaged 37 seconds per game in shorthanded ice time, which was more than double his previous single-season best.
Over the course of his NHL career, Sandin has logged 5,838:40 in aggregate ice time, with less than 100 minutes (90:40) coming on the penalty kill. That’s about 1.5 percent of his total ice time since entering the NHL.
Are the Caps adding regular penalty killing duties to the 25-year-old blueliner’s slate of responsibilities?
“I hope so,” says Sandin. “I feel like the PK time has been going pretty well. I’m still trying to keep up with the other guys, just trying to read the other guys, what they’re doing on the ice. I’m just trying to help out as much as possible.
“But it’s just a lot of fun, getting a chance to play some PK, and help the team in that way.
“Trying to, as much as we can, or as much as he earns,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “I think as his two-way game has developed, I think that’s something he would like to be involved with, so we’ll continue to work him in.”
Washington’s penalty killing unit finished fifth in the NHL last season with a kill rate of 82 percent, their best rate since they finished fifth in the circuit at 84 percent in the pandemic-abbreviated (56 games) season of 2020-21. The Caps’ entire defense from last season returns this year, and the only semi-regular penalty killer to depart over the offseason was veteran center Lars Eller, who logged an average of 44 seconds per game on that unit a season ago.
“I think it's just a matter of personnel,” says Carbery. “When you look at whether it's John [Carlson] and Marty [Fehervary] and then [Trevor van Riemdsyk] didn't play last game, so Sandin takes some of those minutes. Matt Roy, obviously, is a big penalty killer for us, and [Jakob Chychrun] being able to do it. It’s just if one of those guys is not involved, someone else is picking up the slack. So whether that's Chychrun or Rasmus Sandin, all those guys are going to have an opportunity to kill at times.”
Last season, Sandin ranked fifth in shorthanded ice time among the eight defensemen the Caps used all season; van Riemsdyk was fourth with an average of 1:34 per game, nearly a full minute more than Sandin. Van Riemsdyk led all Caps defensemen in shorthanded ice time in 2021-22 (with 2:39 per game) and 2022-23 (2:35) and he has been a fixture in the shorthanded rotation since signing here in 2020-21.
Chychrun’s shorthanded minutes have been up and down like a roller coaster over the course of his 10 seasons in the League. As an 18-year-old rookie in 2016-17, he averaged 1:08 in shorthanded ice time with Arizona, but he dipped to a dozen seconds a night as a sophomore and a mere three seconds per game in his third season. His highest single-season rate was 1:44 in shorthanded ice time while skating in 47 games with Arizona in ’21-22.
Last season with Washington, Chychrun logged just 8:38 in shorthanded ice time over 74 games, an average of just seven seconds a night. He has averaged 16 seconds of shorthanded time in three games this season, while van Riemsdyk has been deployed entirely at 5-on-5 in the two games in which he has appeared.
It goes without saying that these numbers will fluctuate wildly in the games immediately ahead on the horizon until the games and minutes pile up and the nightly averages flatten out a bit, but it’s a situation worth watching.
Sandin has elevated his two-way game since coming to the Caps in a Feb. 28, 2023 trade with Toronto, and he has earned a look on that unit.
I Appear Missing – Late in Sunday’s 1-0 win over the Rangers at Madison Square Garden, Caps center Pierre-Luc Dubois left the ice and did not return to the game. Following a day off on Monday, Dubois was absent from Tuesday’s morning skate ahead of tonight’s tilt with Tampa Bay.
Now in his ninth NHL season, Dubois has played all 82 games in each of the last two seasons and has missed only 20 games over the course of his career. But he won’t play tonight against Tampa Bay, and Carbery says he is day-to-day with a lower body injury.
Last season, Dubois excelled in his role of playing against and neutralizing one of the opposition’s top two lines, and tonight the Caps will take on the Lightning with Connor McMichael and Hendrix Lapierre manning the middle of the team’s middle two lines.
“We handle them very carefully,” responds Carbery, when queried as to how the Caps will handle Tampa’s formidable forward group without Dubois in the lineup. “We’ll look at probably by committee, but I’m sure they’ll get a heavy dose of [Aliaksei Protas and McMichael] and we’re going to have to do a job.
“We all know the strengths of Tampa’s lineup – especially with those five forwards – so that’s where it starts. You have to be able to limit what they’re able to do, because they have the ability to absolutely take over a game, and you don’t have a shot if they have one of their nights that they have frequently with any of those two lines, whether it’s [Jake] Guentzel and [Anthony] Cirelli, it’s hard to get a result against them.”
Heat Lightning Rumbles In The Distance – Since Jon Cooper started his first full season behind the Bolts’ bench in 2013-14, the Lightning (.642) is one of only two NHL teams with a better point percentage than Washington (.628); Boston (.645) is the other.
Yesterday in Beantown, the Bolts recorded their first win of the season with a 4-3 win over the B’s, who rallied back from 3-0 and 4-1 deficits to keep the outcome in doubt until the game’s final seconds.
The Bolts had a bad day on the dot in Boston on Monday, winning only 19 of 60 (32 percent) face-offs in the game, and they enter tonight’s game with the lowest face-off pct. in the NHL (39.7 percent) on the youthful season to date. Last season, Tampa Bay finished 17th in the circuit at just above break-even with a 50.1 percent success rate on draws, right behind the 16th place Capitals (50.2 percent).
Tampa Bay is playing without a couple of centers – Nick Paul and Zemgus Girgensons – who are currently on injured reserve.
Cirelli took the lion’s share of the Lightning’s draws in Monday’s game – 24 of 60 – winning just five of them (21 percent) on the afternoon. But with the Lightning clinging to a precarious one-goal lead late in the game and the Bruins clearly buzzing for the equalizer, Cirelli – who scored the game’s first two goals – came through on the dot when it mattered most.
Three of his five face-off wins came in the back half of the third period, and Cirelli won two of three draws in the game’s final minute, the last of which came with 8.7 seconds left, enabling the Bolts to clear the puck and seal their first victory of the season.
“I know I was terrible, and I’ve got to be better,” Cirelli told The Tampa Bay Times after the game. “It’s an onus on the centers; we’ve just got to be better.”
In The Nets – After Charlie Lindgren blanked the Rangers on 35 shots Sunday night in New York, Logan Thompson is back between the pipes tonight for Washington against the Lightning.
Thompson picked up his first victory of the season with a strong 34-save outing against the Islanders on Saturday night. He has won 32 of his 44 starts since joining the Capitals last season.
Lifetime against the Lightning, Thompson is 0-1-0 in a single appearance, one in which he stopped 16 of 18 shots in 58:57 of work.
Since claiming ex-Caps netkeeper Pheonix Copley off waivers on Oct. 2, Tampa Bay is carrying three goaltenders through the early going of 2025-26. Jonas Johansson started and won for the Bolts on Monday afternoon in Boston, so the Caps will go up against one of the best in the business on Tuesday.
Andrei Vasilevskiy is aiming to author a ninth straight season with 30 or more victories in ’25-26, and he led the NHL in wins for five straight seasons at the start of that streak in 2017-18. The 31-year-old Russian has already racked up 331 career victories in the League, and he led the NHL in games played (63) and minutes (3,743) last season.
For the first time in his 12-year NHL career, the five-time Vezina Trophy finalist is off to a 0-2 start, falling on home ice to Ottawa and New Jersey, respectively, to start the season. Over the years, the Caps have held their own against Vasilevskiy, who owns an 11-11-1 career mark against Washington, with a 3.11 GAA and a .904 save pct.
Last Oct. 26 in Tampa, Vasilevskiy blanked the Caps for the first and only time in his career to date with a 32-save performance.
All Lined Up – Here’s how we expect the Capitals and the Lightning might look on Tuesday night in the District:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
72-Beauvillier, 17-Strome, 8-Ovechkin
21-Protas, 24-McMichael, 43-Wilson
15-Milano, 29-Lapierre, 9-Leonard
22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 34-Sourdif
Defensemen
42-Fehervary, 74-Carlson
38-Sandin, 3-Roy
6-Chychrun, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Healthy Extras
2-Iorio
29-Lapierre
47-Chisholm
Injured/Out
52-McIlrath (lower body)
80-Dubois (lower body)
TAMPA BAY
Forwards
38-Hagel, 21-Point, 86-Kucherov
59-Guentzel, 71-Cirelli, 93-Goncalves
29-Holmberg, 37-Gourde, 22-Bjorkstrand
41-Chaffee, 14-Geekie, 42-Douglas
Defensemen
77-Hedman, 90-Moser
27-McDonagh, 81-Cernak
78-Lilleberg, 24-Crozier
Goalies
88-Vasilevskiy
31-Johansson
39-Copley
Healthy Extras
43-D. Raddysh
62-Finley
Injured/Out
20-Paul (upper body)
28-Girgensons (undisclosed)
