Dec. 29 vs. Florida Panthers at Amerant Bank Arena
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN/Caps Radio Network
Washington Capitals (20-13-5)
Florida Panthers (20-15-2)
Two nights after a thrilling overtime win over the Devils in New Jersey, the Caps finish a two-game road trip in South Florida against the Panthers on Monday night. Monday’s game is the middle match of the three-game season series between the two former Southeast Division rivals; Florida makes its lone visit of to DC this season on Jan. 17.
Coming out of the holiday break and traveling and flying on the day of the game, the Caps shook off adversity for a good chunk of the day and evening, and they again demonstrated their bounce back ability, coming back in the third period to win after having lost a game they led entering the third in their previous game.
Jakob Chychrun’s goal at 4:06 of overtime lifted the Caps over the Devils by a 4-3 count on Saturday in Jersey. The Caps scuffled through the first two periods of Saturday’s game, spending lengthy stretches of time in their own end of the ice. But thanks to Logan Thompson – who made 28 saves in the first 40 minutes, including every shot he faced at 5-on-5 – the Caps carried a precarious 2-1 lead into the final frame.
When New Jersey struck for two goals just 32 seconds apart seven minutes into the third, the Caps lead was gone, the Devils had all the momentum and the Saturday night crowd in Newark had come alive. In their last game prior to the holiday break, the Caps had let a slim third-period lead slip away in what became an ugly 7-3 loss to the Rangers on home ice.
It was critical for the Caps to regain momentum, and they did so less than two minutes after the Devils had taken their first lead of the night. Rasmus Sandin made a sublime feed to Alex Ovechkin for the tying goal – ending a nine-game red light dry spell for the captain – and the Caps had the better of the play and possession the rest of the way through regulation time.
“In those moments, you’re completely deflated,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery of the Devils’ tying and go-ahead goals. “I’m thinking about, do we need a timeout here just to reset? And I thought our guys did a tremendous job of resetting in that moment, in their own individual way, right? You’re down in the game now; you thought you were sealing a third period [lead]. It’s not ideal, not the way we drew it up, but our team keeps fighting, and that’s the character of our group.”
“I loved the resilience,” Caps forward Justin Sourdif. “The Rangers game, things just kind of fall apart there. [Saturday] night, we just stuck with it. We really stuck with it and kept pushing, and didn’t let their momentum take over. We just got right back to it the next shift, and obviously O scored that big goal. And then we got it to OT, and it was nice to get an OT win, too. It was a really nice play by Chychy there.”
Saturday’s win was just the second for the Capitals in their last eight games (2-4-2), and the victory was spearheaded by the performance of Aliaksei Protas, who scored Washington’s first goal of the game with less than a full second remaining on the clock in the first period, then helped set up each of the next two tallies as well.
Over the last eight games in which Washington has scuffled, Protas and Chychrun are tied for the team lead with four goals and Protas leads with seven points.
“I thought he was fantastic,” says Carbery of Protas. “[He was] noticeable in all three zones. Even just his breakout wall play was just so strong, good decisions with the puck. I’m moving him around to different lines, he’s playing with different centermen and he has three points tonight. Yeah, a terrific game.”
With the games coming in rapid rhythm over the next six weeks, the Caps need to find ways of stacking wins together and accruing points in the tightly packed Eastern Conference standings where a mere 13 points separate the Conference’s 16 teams, and where all 16 have a points percentage of .500 or better.
“We know how important that game was, especially in the standings,” says Sourdif of Saturday’s win. “And January is a really, really big month, especially with playing limited games in February; it doesn’t leave too many games after the Olympic break there, so we want to put ourselves in a good position.”
Virtually every team in the East has had stretches of both sizzling and fallow hockey in terms of accruing points to this juncture of the campaign. The trick is to keep the fallow stretches short.
“Everybody knows this; it’s just a gauntlet – the League – and how challenging it is on a nightly basis,” says Carbery. “I don’t care who you’re playing against and I don’t care where you’re playing that hockey game, every night to get two points in the National Hockey League is a difficult task.
“And I feel like for us, when you get a little bit of momentum and get rolling like we did for that good portion, it’s contagious and you feel good, and I can feel it from our group, I can feel it for our guys, I can feel it on the bench, I can see it in plays that happen through that stretch. And then, when it starts to go the other way, you feel the opposite. You feel like, ‘Ah, we’re just making the wrong play in the wrong moment,’ or ‘The puck’s going that way and we’re going that way.’
“And I’m not trying to attribute it to luck or anything like that, I’m trying to attribute it to just an overall confidence and swagger that can build when the parity in the games is so tight on a nightly basis.”
While the Caps were dispatching the Devils in Newark on Saturday, the Panthers were taking a 4-2 setback at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first game of a five-game homestand for the Panthers. The Bolts cooled the Cats in a penalty-filled contest; the game featured 27 roughing minors, five misconducts, and only two fighting majors. And Florida went 1-for-10 and the Lightning was 0-for-6 on the power play in what turned out to be a penalty killing festival.
Even with Saturday night’s loss to the Lightning and the ongoing absence of several key players to injury, the Panthers continue to hang in as they vie for a third straight Stanley Cup championship. Florida has won eight of its last 11 games (8-3-0).
Once their current homestand is in the books, the two-time defending champion Cats will be seeing a lot of the road over the remainder of January. Florida will play 10 of its next 12 games on the road; its Jan. 17 visit to the District is the finale of a six-game road trip.
