At Home He’s A Tourist – The Caps are home tonight, but not for long. Tonight’s tilt with the Pittsburgh Penguins is a stand-alone home game, and it’s the only game in stretch of 14 – over a span of 32 days – in which Washington will face a Metropolitan Division opponent. It’s also the Caps’ last home game in January; they depart for their longest road trip of the season – a journey of a dozen days in which they’ll play five games in three time zones – on Sunday afternoon.
Washington is returning from a one-game road trip, a Thursday night trip to Ottawa that didn’t produce a Picasso of a performance from the Capitals, but it did result in them bringing home a pair of points from the great white north.
As they prepare to face the Pens tonight, the Caps are again aiming to generate more offense and more time in the offensive zone. Despite controlling just 46.82 percent of all shot attempts at 5-on-5 – and ranking 24th in the NHL in that category over that span – the Caps have yielded just five goals in their last five games (4-0-1).
“We’re just not doing enough to carry play,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “I don’t know if it just equates to an offensive concept because when you go through the film, it’s not just a lack of shots. It’s not turning down shots or missing the net. It’s a culmination of puck management through the neutral zone, managing your shift length, line changes, poor decisions when we have tired people, and all these different things.
“I think the end result is, if you don’t have the puck, then you’re not generating shots and chances. So we’ll look to get that back on track tonight.”
The Great Eight Hundred – Tom Wilson entered the NHL as an anomaly; he played in the Stanley Cup playoffs before playing his first regular season NHL game – on Oct. 1, 2013 in Chicago – and before he even suited up for an NHL preseason contest. As a teenager in the spring of 2013, Wilson played in the OHL, AHL and NHL playoffs in a span of just weeks, all as a teenager, and all before making his regular season NHL debut.
Wilson played in all 82 games as a rookie in 2013-14, but he averaged less than eight minutes per night in ice time. Of the 23 players in NHL history who played 82 or more games and were teenagers in their rookie season, none had fewer goals (three) or points (10) than Wilson.
Tonight, against the Penguins, Wilson skates in his 800th career NHL game.
Wilson becomes the ninth Capitals player to reach 800 games with the team, and at 30 years and 295 days, he is the third youngest to do so, trailing only Nicklas Backstrom (30 years and 105 days) and Alex Ovechkin (30 years and 114 days).
“Whenever those names come up, it’s pretty special,” admits Wilson. “[They’re] future Hall of Famers, they’re Capitals legends, and good friends of mine, obviously. I’ve gotten pretty close to them over the years, and it’s always easy to think about all the stuff they’ve done on the ice over the years, but all the off-ice memories with those guys and different teammates over the years is what I hold so close to my heart.
“It’s been a really fun group every year, and it’s been awesome to be part of this organization. It’s obviously a privilege to be named with some of those guys, but there’s really a lot of guys who have helped me get here – the coaches, the teammates, and everybody that I grew up with, my family and stuff. It’s been a heck of a ride and a lot of great people along the way.”
Wilson scored his first NHL goal in his 15th game in the League, and he scored it on the power play, in “garbage time” of a lopsided Washington win over the Islanders. He would hoist the Stanley Cup and play 383 more regular season NHL games before scoring his second power-play goal in the League.
This season, Wilson leads the Caps and is tied for fifth in the NHL with nine power-play goals in 45 games, matching his total from his last 107 regular season games over the previous two seasons.
A dozen and a half years after he was drafted in Pittsburgh in the summer of 2012, Wilson is a full-fledged NHL star, and he is still an anomaly in that he is one of very few NHL players capable of delivering 20 goals and accumulating 100 or more PIM, all while skating in his team’s top six and being a fixture on both special teams.
“He has had just such an incredible career thus far,” says Carbery. “To say that, ‘Tom Wilson has played 800 hockey games in the NHL,’ we still think of him as this young guy. He has played 800 games. It’s not an easy League to play 200 games in, but to play that long and to play as young as he was when he started, and how he has come in, and the maturation process of not only him as a leader and as a father, husband, dad, but his game has just evolved to so many different layers.
“And he does so many different things; he plays in every single situation, plays the right way, the physicality, the scoring, you name it. I look at the Ottawa game and we weren't playing very well in that second period, and then he starts dragging people into the fight. We have to kill off [three] penalties, he takes [Brady] Tkachuk in, but he showed our group, ‘We're not giving in tonight, and I'm going to go down fighting. And I don't mean that in a literal term. I mean that in a ‘he's going to be scratching and clawing and not going away [sense].’ And if somebody touches our goaltender, he's ripping them [up]. Just that, I think, is a prime example. He has done that his whole career, but it’s just so valuable, and it’s why he's such a valuable, valuable player, and we are so lucky to have him in this organization.”
In The Nets – Logan Thompson gets his fourth consecutive starting assignment tonight against Pittsburgh. Thompson enters tonight’s game on the heels of consecutive shutouts and carrying a shutout streak of 146 minutes and 53 seconds, the 13th longest streak in franchise history. With his 1-0 overtime victory over Ottawa on Thursday, Thompson hit the 20-win mark for the third straight season. In the process, he tied Braden Holtby (25 GP in 2015-16) for the fastest a Caps goalie has ever reached the double sawbuck level in victories.
With 24 starts on the season to date, Thompson is tied for 25th among all NHL goalies. But he ranks fourth in the League in wins, and each of the three goaltenders ahead of him on that list has started at least nine more games than him. In his last nine games (eight starts), Thompson is 8-0-1 with two shutouts, a 1.48 GAA and a .948 save pct.
Lifetime against the Penguins, Thompson is 1-1-0 with a 3.05 GAA and a .917 save pct. in two appearances, both starts.
Earlier in the week, the Pens waived veteran goaltender Tristan Jarry, who is in the second year of a five-year contract extension. With Jarry now toiling at AHL Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, the Pens expect to roll with a tandem of Alex Nedeljkovic and Joel Blomqvist.
Last night in Buffalo, Nedeljkovic had a game for the ages, and one that no other netminder in League history has ever had. In addition to making 40 saves and earning the victory, Nedeljkovic assisted on the game-winning goal and scored a goal of his own, a 183-foot, dead solid perfect shot from behind his own goal line to the back of the opposing net.
That will be a tough act for Blomqvist to follow, but the rookie goalie defeated the Caps here on Nov. 8, making 32 saves for the win, the third of his NHL career. Three nights later, he got the net again at home against Dallas, but was pulled midway through a six-goal first period for the Stars in a 7-1 Dallas victory. Blomqvist was returned to the AHL soon after, and his start against the Caps tonight is his first NHL appearance since that Nov. 11 game against the Stars.
His Nov. 8 victory over Washington is Blomqvist’s lone career appearance against the Caps. He is the third goaltender from the 2020 NHL Draft the Caps will have faced in a span of just five games. Blomqvist was chosen in the second round (52nd overall). Two nights ago in Ottawa, the Caps faced Leevi Merilainen, the Sens’ third-round (71st overall) choice and a week ago last night (Jan. 10) they faced Montreal’s Jakub Dobes (fifth round, 136th overall).
Washington is currently 3-3-2 against the goaltending class of 2020, which also includes San Jose’s Yaroslav Askarov (drafted by Nashville), Buffalo’s Devon Levi (drafted by Florida) and New Jersey’s Nico Daws.
A total of 20 goaltenders were selected in the 2020 NHL Draft; among the seven that have since ascended to the NHL, third-rounder Daws (84th overall) leads the pack with 46 games played in the League.
Washington drafted goaltender Garin Bjorklund in 2020; he was the 15th of those 20 netminders chosen in that draft. The Caps chose Bjorklund in the sixth round (179th overall), and he is currently in his second pro season at ECHL South Carolina, where he is 6-3-1 in 11 appearances with a 2.05 GAA and a .926 save pct. this season.
All Lined Up – Here’s how we believe the Capitals and the Penguins might look on Saturday night in the District:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
21-Protas, 17-Strome, 8-Ovechkin
24-McMichael, 80-Dubois, 43-Wilson
16-Raddysh, 20-Eller, 53-Frank
22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 88-Mangiapane
Defensemen
38-Sandin, 74-Carlson
42-Fehervary, 3-Roy
6-Chychrun, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Extras
13-Vrana
27-Alexeyev
52-McIlrath
Out/Injured
15-Milano (upper body)
19-Backstrom (hip)
77-Oshie (back)
PITTSBURGH
Forwards
67-Rakell, 87-Crosby, 17-Rust
8-Bunting, 71-Malkin, 72-Beauvillier
10-O’Connor, 13-Hayes, 53-Tomasino
46-Lizotte, 19-Glass, 55-Acciari
Defensemen
28-Pettersson, 43-Grzelcyk
38-Pickering, 65-Karlsson
27-Graves, 73-Joseph
Goaltenders
30-Blomqvist
39-Nedeljkovic
Extras
5-Shea
83-Nieto
Out/Injured
58-Letang (illness, game-time decision, might play)
