Oct. 25 vs. Ottawa Senators at Capital One Arena
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN/Caps Radio Network
Ottawa Senators (3-4-1)
Washington Capitals (6-2-0)
A night after prevailing over the Blue Jackets in Columbus, the Caps come home to host the Ottawa Senators in the second half of a weekend set of back-to-back games. In Saturday’s game, Caps captain Alex Ovechkin skates in the 1,500th game of his NHL career. Ovechkin supplied the game-winner on Friday night in Columbus, netting the 899th goal of his illustrious career early in the third period.
Logan Thompson stole the show – and the game – for the Caps in Columbus with a marvelous 34-save performance in which he made a number of massive stops, and he occasionally denied multiple shots in short succession. With five wins in six starts, Thompson is tied for the NHL lead in wins with Colorado’s Scott Wedgewood and Utha’s Karel Vejmelka.
Thompson’s qualitative numbers – a 1.50 GAA and a .938 save pct. – rank second and third, respectively, among goaltenders with at least two starts thus far.
“It's just the way he fights through screens,” says Caps forward Justin Sourdif of Thompson’s stellar outing on Friday. “When you're having two or three guys in front of you, It's pretty hard to stop a puck when you can't see it. And he just does such a great job of fighting through traffic. And we're like, ‘How did he see that?’
“And he's just able to kind of get low and see those shots coming through screens. And he was also just really sound too, with the puck, and that helped us out a lot tonight.”
Sourdif helped the Caps out, too, scoring his first goal in a Washington sweater on a breakout started by Thompson.
“I just want to throw it up the middle, kind of mix it up,” says Thompson of recording his second assist as a Capital, and the fifth of his career. “I was using the walls a lot, and, yeah, got it through, and got a point out of it. I won't do that too often, but I'm happy with it.”
Friday’s win keeps the Caps perfect (3-0-0) on the road this season, where they’ve allowed three goals against in as many games. Washington also remains the stingiest team in the NHL at 5-on-5; the Caps have surrendered just eight goals in as many games in that situation, and one of those was an empty-net goal.
“If you look under the hood, and you look at our 5-on-5 underlying numbers, they're really, really strong,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “We've been doing a lot of good things from controlling play, puck possession, being able to attack the net and generate dangerous opportunities. There's a lot of good things inside of our game that have helped us get off to a good start. And now it's just about sustaining that, and trying to find little areas that we can improve in, and finishing a little bit more, and continuing to improve on special teams and all that sort of stuff. It’s been a good start, and as you know, it’s a long year and it only gets more challenging as you move along.”
Washington’s much maligned power play has quickly and quietly climbed the ladder with a recent hot spell that continued on Friday night with a pair of extra-man strikes during a critical five-minute, all-you-can-eat power play in the latter half of the third period.
With the Caps nursing a 3-1 lead and the Jackets threatening to seize momentum, Columbus winger Mathieu Olivier took an unwise elbowing major when he chicken-winged Washington defenseman Declan Chisholm behind the play with 7:25 left in the third.
Tom Wilson and Connor McMichael scored to put the game out of reach, and to give the Caps their first game with multiple power-play goals this season. The Caps have scored a power-play goal in five straight games, and they have upped their efficiency rate to a respectable 22.2 percent, 12th in the NHL.
“I was honestly looking at it as, ‘Okay, if we can just sort of kill this power play off, in a sense,” says Carbery. “I know you’re hoping you can find a way to get one or two, but you’re looking at the clock and it’s 3-1. If this goes down five minutes, there’s two and a half, three minutes – whatever it was – to play. Good on our power play though, for salting that away, and finding a way to attack and find a couple there late.”
Just as Saturday’s game represents a one-game “homestand” for the Caps, it represents an entire road trip for Ottawa. The Sens just finished up a four-game homestand in which they sandwiched wins in the first and last games around a pair of losses in the middle. The Senators return to Canada after Saturday’s contest; they host Boston on Monday in the front end of a set of back-to-backs. The Sens visit Chicago on Tuesday in what will be their third one-game journey of the young season.
Most recently, Ottawa earned a 2-1 win over the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday in the finale of their homestand. On Saturday in Washington, the Sens will be seeking to stack wins together for the first time this season.
In Thursday’s win over the Flyers, the Sens fell behind in the first minute of the contest, but they shut the door tightly the rest of the way. Ottawa has yielded the game’s first goal in seven of its eight games this season, so it is familiar with playing from behind. With 77:43 of total lead time in their eight games this season, Ottawa ranks 31st, ahead of only Anaheim (59:50).
