April 17 vs. Pittsburgh Penguins at PPG Paints Arena
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: ESPN
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps Radio 24/7
Washington Capitals (51-21-9)
Pittsburgh Penguins (33-36-12)
The Caps conclude the 2024-25 regular season with a Thursday night date with the Penguins in Pittsburgh. Just under two months ago, the Caps played their first game following the NHL’s pause for this year’s 4 Nations Face-Off tournament here in the Steel City, taking an 8-3 decision over the Pens here in a Saturday afternoon contest on Feb. 22.
Coming into Thursday’s regular season finale here, the Caps are 15-10-1 since the aforementioned pause, and they’re coming into the game on the heels of an impressive 3-1 victory over the Islanders in New York on Tuesday night.
Dylan Strome’s first hat trick as a member of the Capitals and a stellar 32-save performance from Charlie Lindgren in goal paced the Caps on Tuesday in New York, and both players managed to achieve personal milestones in the process as well.
Strome’s three-goal night pushed his total to 29 on the season, surpassing his previous best of 27 established last season. Strome also surpassed the 80-point barrier for the first time in his career, becoming the first player not drafted by the Caps to do so since Adam Oates (82 points in 2000-01).
A Hockey Hall of Famer, Oates was undrafted; so among players chosen in the NHL Draft, Strome is the first Capital drafted by another club to reach that plateau with Washington since Mike Ridley (82 points in 1992-93).
Strome’s 80-point season is the 40th in the team’s franchise history, and he joins Oates, Ridley (twice), Geoff Courtnall, Larry Murphy, Dave Christian (twice), Dennis Maruk (four times) and Guy Charron as the players who have achieved the milestone after coming to Washington from other organizations.
Strome scored on the power play in the first period, at 5-on-5 in the second, and he completed the hat trick with an empty-net goal with 1:11 remaining in the third period.
“We put him out there in a unorthodox spot for him -- five on six – but knew that he had two, and thought it was a good time for him to be able to get out there and try to seal the victory for us,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “And he's done a lot for this team, and so he deserves and has earned to be in that spot to try to get that hat trick and seal the win for us at this point in the season, so that was good.
“And his goals, obviously, are the difference. In those games – very similar to the [Sunday] Columbus game – we get some chances, [Isles goalie Ilya] Sorokin is playing well, and we don't finish. You need someone to break through, and he does that on the power play, but then also the second goal, to get that pass out from [Alex Ovechkin], he makes a great play and shoots it in the back of the net. So it was the difference for us offensively tonight, and has a huge impact.”
Lindgren’s Tuesday night win was his 20th of the season, the second straight campaign in which he has reached that mark. For the first time in franchise history, the Caps have a 30-win goaltender (Logan Thompson is 31-6-6 this season) and a 20-win goaltender in the same season, and 2024-25 marks the third time they’ve had two netminders with 20 or more victories in the same season.
Al Jensen (25) and Pat Riggin (21) both notched 20 victories in 1983-84, and Ilya Samsonov (23) and Vitek Vanecek (20) pulled it off in 2021-22.
Perhaps most importantly, the Caps put together a solid defensive effort, solid enough to end an 11-game streak in which they had yielded three or more goals against in each game, with a 4-6-1 mark to show for it. And they mustered that defensive effort on Tuesday without their top two defensemen in terms of munching minutes, John Carlson and Jakob Chychrun. Both blueliners took the night off for maintenance purposes, enabling Alex Alexeyev and Dylan McIlrath to jump into the lineup.
Both played well, with Alexeyev logging 19:18 in ice time and McIlrath skating 10:24. Matt Roy (25:52), Rasmus Sandin (23:03) and Trevor van Riemsdyk (21:16) all skated more than their nightly average, partially because Martin Fehervary (14:38) missed some shifts late in the first and early in the second while being evaluated by the Caps’ training staff.
Roy’s ice time in Tuesday’s game is his highest in his 69 games with the Capitals this season, and Sandin stepped in to quarterback the first unit power play from up top while Carlson and Chychrun rested, picking up an assist on Strome’s power-play goal, his 30th point of the season.
“He did a great job on the power play,” says Carbery of Sandin. “You see a couple of those entries that he takes on himself, and that they score a goal on that power play; he's a part of that. So it was a good job.
“And that's the area where Sandy, like we've talked about a bunch, he's really embraced the role of being a better defensive player, being able to play a 200-foot game to complement his offensive side. And I always talk about his defensive side, because that's the proudest part of his game I am of him, and where he's come and how much that area of his game has grown. But he's still very driven to be a good offensive defenseman, so when he gets opportunities to run the first unit power play, he wants to take advantage of that and show that he could do well and be successful in those scenarios and situations.
“So I’m happy for him that he played well [Tuesday] night and we needed it, because with with guys out, he played a larger role.”
