Dec. 20 vs. Detroit Red Wings at Capital One Arena
Time: 12:30 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN/Caps Radio Network
Detroit Red Wings (19-13-3)
Washington Capitals (19-11-4)
The Caps finish up a brief two-game homestand and start a weekend set of back-to-back games when they host the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday afternoon at Capital One Arena. Saturday’s game is the front end of a home-and-home set of games as well; both teams will hustle to the Motor City immediately after Saturday’s game; they’ll have a rematch on Sunday afternoon at Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena.
Washington started the homestand on the good foot, rebounding from a rough road trip to Winnipeg and Minnesota, respectively, a journey that produced no points, no scoreboard leads and just one goal. Following an unscheduled off day on Wednesday, the Caps took the ice against Toronto on Thursday night, and they delivered one of their top 60-minute performances of the season in a convincing 4-0 whitewash of the Maple Leafs.
Logan Thompson made 22 saves and the Justin Sourdif line – with wingers Aliaksei Protas and Tom Wilson – played an exemplary game in stymying Toronto’s Auston Matthews line. Not only did Sourdif’s line generate two of Washington’s four goals in the game, they held Matthews and linemates Matthew Knies and William Nylander without a shot on net at 5-on-5.
Entering Thursday’s game, Matthews had 10 goals in 20 career games against Washington. He was held to one power-play shot in the second period and another in the third. Nylander came into the contest with eight career goals in 22 games against the Capitals; his only shot on net of the night came on the power play, just 90 seconds after the game’s opening puck drop.
“I thought in the [offensive] zone tonight we did a really good job,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery of Thursday’s contest with the Leafs. “Sourdif, I thought you could make a strong case for that being his best game of the year. I thought he was all over the puck, [had] separation speed, almost caught from behind three or four times. And yeah, he was fantastic.”
Sourdif also picked up a pair of assists, won half of his dozen face-offs and skated 14:04 in a game replete with special teams time, and he doesn’t skate on the power play or the penalty kill.
Washington also limited the Leafs to just five power-play shots on net in 10 full minutes with the extra man, and the Caps’ blueliners were a vital part of the restoration of the team’s offensive wherewithal. For the fourth time this season, both Jakob Chychrun and John Carlson scored in the same game; Chychrun scored twice while Carlson added a pair of helpers to his goal.
During a recent span in which Washington rolled up a 10-1-2 mark across three and a half weeks, one of the primary features of its attack was a formidable low-to-high game in which the Caps would either forecheck or win pucks down low or along the walls in the offensive zone, then make plays to get those pucks out to the point while bringing traffic to the net front. That aspect of their game made a welcome return against the Leafs.
“Yeah, for sure,” says Chychrun. “I think we’re at our best when we’re playing in sync in the [offensive] zone, using the points, getting movement. Every team tries to do it. I think we’ve got a lot of very capable [defensemen] that can make reads up there. Every night is going to be a little different with who you’re playing against, but tonight we were able to take advantage of it a little bit more and get a lot of great looks.
“And their goalie [Dennis Hildeby] made a ton of big saves, too. I think we definitely could have had some more, but it was just good to see a lot of those Grade A’s.”
Winning those puck battles and making good decisions in the aftermath of those battles was also crucial.
“In the [offensive] zone,” begins Carbery, “I thought, not only [did we] get pucks out of those situations, but we did a really good job, because those are tight areas down low. Whether it's a forecheck puck or you're getting closed on, you’ve got to get it out of there. And so, you've got to either skate or you’ve got to move it to the right spot. And I just thought we did a really good job of getting pucks out of tight areas where they had numbers around it. And now we can spread the zone, and now we can get to work whether we're shooting it from the point or whether we're going [defenseman] to [defenseman], but you’ve got to get out of that initial battle, and I thought we did a real good job of that, to get into our offensive zone.”
Now the Caps will roll into a pair of weekend afternoon games, a scenario that can be fraught with some uneasiness because players are taken out of their typical daily routine.
But despite what seems to be a popular opinion that the Caps tend to struggle in these afternoon affairs, the opposite is actually true. In the Carbery era of 198 games since the start of the 2023-24 season, Washington owns a 110-64-24 record, for a .616 points percentage, eighth best in the NHL across that span. In afternoon games – defined by the League as games with start times prior to 6 p.m. – across the same span, Washington is 18-9-3, for a .650 points percentage. The Caps are 2-1-0 in afternoon games this season, and their last two games of November were both matinee matches. They won both.
“Honestly, we’ve been pretty good,” says Carbery. “I’ll point to two games specifically, because I look at before five o’clock starts. Last year, coming out of [the Four Nations tourney], I think we played Edmonton and Pittsburgh. It was like back-to-back, one o’clock and one-thirty games, and those were two really good games; those were two really good games for the Caps.
“[Saturday] is pretty self-explanatory, but to the overall point of playing these early games and that, it’s important that we’re ready and we make the necessary adjustments as a staff and as players to make sure that we’re ready at 12:30.”
Late Friday afternoon, the Caps loaned winger Bogdan Trineyev to AHL Hershey and recalled Ivan Miroshnichenko from that same club. Trineyev made his NHL debut in Winnipeg last weekend and he also skated in Thursday night’s win over Toronto.
The 21-year-old Miroshnichenko – the Caps’ first-round pick (20th overall) in the 2022 NHL Draft – has logged 39 games with Washington across the previous two seasons, totaling three goals and seven assists for 10 points. With Hershey this season, Miroshnichenko had four goals and five assists for nine points in a dozen games.
As the seal breaks on Friday night’s slate of NHL activity, the Red Wings occupy the top slot in the Atlantic Division standings, one point ahead of fellow Original Sixers Montreal and Boston and only seven points clear of basement-dwelling Buffalo.
The Wings have claimed at least a point in eight of their last 10 games (6-2-2) and they just split a two-game homestand after a highly successful (4-1-1) six-game road trip out west. Most recently, the Wings fell to the Mammoth 4-1 in Detroit on Wednesday night in the second half of a set of back-to-backs. The Red Wings prevailed over the Islanders 3-2 in the front half on Tuesday.
Detroit is the last of the Atlantic Division teams the Caps are seeing for the first time this season. After Saturday’s game, Philadelphia will be the only Eastern Conference club the Caps haven’t faced in 2025-26.
