I’m In A Philly Mood – The Caps have one last road tilt ahead of the 4 Nations Face-Off, and it’s tonight in Philadelphia against the Flyers. Washington sees Philly for the first time since an early season set of home-and-home games the Caps were able to sweep, games five and six of the regular season for them.
Tonight, the Caps will take the ice for game No. 54; they’ll be precisely two-thirds of the way through the season at the first intermission of Sunday afternoon’s home game against Utah.
Although the Flyers have been scuffling at 1-5-1 in their last seven games, the Caps have seen enough of these guys over the years on a season in, season out basis to know there are no nights off to be had against them, or any other team in the planet’s best hockey League, for that matter.
“What I see is a team that is a lot better than their record, and the numbers back that up,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “I think they've had some unfortunate things that have led to some games playing out the way that they have played out and ended up in the ‘L’ column. But when you look at the way they play, especially offensively, they are creating a lot of dangerous looks, and haven't finished at a rate that you would expect to be able to – whatever the shooting percentage is – but I think they have one of the worst finishing rates in the National Hockey League of being able to capitalize on chances.
“Usually, that evens out over time. It means that they, on any given night, if pucks go in for them, that they've generated enough to win hockey games. And so we need to be ready tonight for sure, [against an] in division rival, [a John Tortorella-coached team], and how hard his teams work, and how difficult they make it to get to the inside. We’re going to have our hands full for sure tonight.”
Word Forward – Between opening night of the 2024-25 season and the end of November, the Caps played 24 games, rolling up an impressive 17-6-1 record. During those two dozen games, Washington was able to string together three straight games with four or more goals scored on four occasions; the Caps scored four or more goals 15 times in those first two dozen games of the season, and their average of 4.21 goals per game over that stretch led the NHL by a fair amount. Second-place Winnipeg checked in at 3.88, roughly a third of a goal less per game.
In the 29 games the Caps have played since the end of November, they have scored four or more goals just nine times. Over that span, Washington has averaged exactly 3.0 goals per game, tied for a respectable 11th in the circuit over that stretch.
The Caps have an 18-5-6 record in those 29 games since December’s outset, and their point percentage of .724 is second only to that of Edmonton (.733) across that span. Washington’s defense and goaltending have come to the fore these last couple of months; the Caps have yielded just 2.10 goals against per game in their last 29 games, tops in the NHL.
All that said, as the Caps head into tonight’s game in Philadelphia against the Flyers, they do so with a streak of three straight games with four or more goals scored. It’s the first time they’ve done so since the beginning of December.
On the other side of that coin, the Caps enter tonight’s game having yielded 13 goals over their previous three games, also doing so for the first time since the beginning of December.
Last season at this time, the Caps were a 12th place team in the Eastern Conference, struggling nightly to scrape enough points to eventually squeak into the playoffs. This season, they’re the top team in the League’s standings, two-thirds of the way through the campaign. Making or missing the playoffs is much less of a concern for the Capitals than it was a year ago, which gives them the luxury of being able to spend the next two months shining up their overall game and getting it playoff ready.
“In my opinion, when you go into the playoffs, it doesn’t matter what seed you fall into; it’s about feeling good about how your game is going,” says Caps center Nic Dowd. “You can see every year playoff teams get in at the end, and they’re playing really good hockey because they’ve been under a lot of stress the last month [of the regular season] and they end up rolling over teams they encounter, whether it’s in the first, second or third round. That happens every year.
“And you see teams that have been [safely] in a playoff spot for 10, 15 or 20 games, and they can’t pull it together because maybe they’re not playing their best hockey. In my opinion, it’s about trying to stay consistent and trying to take continuous steps forward – whether that’s big steps or baby steps – and moving in the right direction and staying positive with our game. And it’s about not being happy with where we are as a hockey team but trying to actually get better and trying to work on things.
“We’ve played good this year. We’ve put ourselves in a position where we can work on things and we can try to get better as we push towards the end of the year. Making the playoffs is no guarantee for any team, so I don’t care where we sit. I just thing that we have to continue to try to play good hockey, all around. And we are going to have learning experiences every single day, and it’s on us to take that opportunity and try to take from it and use it later on in the season.”
The 2024-25 Caps do seem to have a rather absorbent mindset, eager to learn from and move past mistakes, and eager to get better individually and as a whole. Two-thirds of the way through the season, they’ve been in essentially every game, have given themselves a chance to win or pull points from essentially every game.
“We’re coming out every single night, and we’re playing hard,” says Caps defenseman John Carlson. “And I think that’s a mentality, it’s a mindset, and it’s obviously something that we’ve talked about a lot. I think one of the reasons for our success is that we haven’t had many – if not any – of those nights where we just feel like we really don’t have it, and we can’t find something, whether it goes bad at the beginning or whatever period. We haven’t had any of those kinds of games, and that’s why we are where we are in the standings.
“But also, I think that’s infectious and that’s what we’ll rely upon the rest of the way.”
In The Nets – Charlie Lindgren starts for the Caps tonight in Philly, his first starting assignment in a week, since the Caps concluded a five-game road trip with a 5-4 overtime loss to the Senators in Ottawa last Thursday night. In that bizarre game, none of the five goals Washington yielded came at 5-on-5, and Lindgren faced a pair of shorthanded penalty shot opportunities in the same game. He stopped the second of the two, and it turned out to be a massive stop in the game, directly responsible for the Caps picking up a point from that game.
In his last four starts, Lindgren is 1-1-1 with a shutout, a 2.07 GAA and a .922 save pct. Lifetime against Philadelphia, he is 4-0-2 with a shutout, a 1.30 GAA and a .951 save pct. in six appearances, all starts.
The Flyers are going with Ivan Fedotov in net tonight. When the Caps and Flyers played a home-and-home set of back-to-back games back in October, Fedotov – Philly’s seventh-round pick, (188th overall) in the 2015 NHL Draft – started the second game, on Oct. 23 in Washington. The Caps won that contest by a 6-3 count, with Fedotov yielding four goals against on 23 shots in 58:24 of work in what was his third start of the season; that’s the sum of his experience against Washington.
Playing mainly in a support role for No. 1 netminder Samuel Ersson, Fedotov has logged 16 appearances (15 starts) in this, his first full NHL season, posting a 4-7-3 mark to go along with a 3.21 GAA and an .881 save pct.
Of the 56 NHL goaltenders who have seen action in as many as 15 games this season, Fedotov’s average offensive support of just 2.25 goals per game ranks 54th, ahead of only Ottawa’s Anton Forsberg (2.24) and Nashville’s Juuse Saros (2.22).
All Lined Up – Here’s how we believe the Capitals and Flyers might look on Thursday night in Philadelphia:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 43-Wilson
21-Protas, 80-Dubois, 24-McMichael
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)
PHILADELPHIA
Forwards
71-Foerster, 27-Cates, 10-Brink
90-Richard, 14-Couturier, 39-Michkov
21-Laughton, 18-Abols, 11-Konecny
44-Deslauriers, 78-Gaucher, 19-Hathaway
Defensemen
8-York, 6-Sanheim
36-Andrae, 77-Johnson
24-Seeler, 9-Drysdale
Goaltenders
82-Fedotov
33-Ersson
Extras
35-Kolosov
Out/Injured
5-Zamula (upper body)
22-Pelletier (visa issues)
25-Poehling (upper body)
55-Ristolainen (undisclosed)
74-Tippett (undisclosed)
94-Ellis (back)
96-Kuzmenko (visa issues)
