Following an off day on Sunday, the Caps reconvened at MedStar Capitals Iceplex on Monday morning, where they conducted a holiday practice before they duck out of town for the next few days. With an inordinate amount of time between their last preseason game this past Saturday night and Friday’s opening night contest against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday, Caps coach Spencer Carbery and his team are changing up their environment for a couple of days.
The Caps head to Maryland’s eastern shore area on Monday afternoon for a couple of team dinners, a day of team building and bonding on Tuesday, and a Wednesday morning practice. The Caps will return to Arlington on Wednesday, and they’ll conduct one last full practice on Thursday before the Penguins hit town.
Half a dozen NHL clubs open their seasons tomorrow night, and each of the League’s 32 teams must submit its opening night roster by 5 p.m. today. Washington will submit a roster by the prescribed time, but that roster will not mirror the Caps’ actual opening night roster for Friday’s game against the Penguins. The opening night roster the Caps submit to the League late this afternoon will obviously be compliant with the NHL’s salary cap, but the team is planning a few paper transactions of waiver exempt players for salary cap purposes.
Ahead of Wednesday morning’s practice in Maryland, the Caps will make another series of paper transactions, and at that time they will release their actual opening night roster.
What’s clear is that there will be more youth on the Washington roster than in recent seasons. Depending on how the last few roster trims shake out, the Caps are likely to have eight rostered players who are age 25 or younger when their Wednesday morning roster is released. If that proves to be the case, it will be the most players aged 25 or younger on the team’s opening night roster since 2019-20, when it had nine such players on its opening night roster.
Defenseman Lucas Johansen and winger Matthew Phillips were both told they’ve made Washington’s opening night roster, a first for both of those 25-year-old veteran pros. Johansen has been in the Caps’ organization since he was drafted in 2016, while Phillips signed with Washington over the summer, after spending the first five years of his pro career in the Calgary chain.
“He had a phenomenal camp,” says Carbery of Phillips. “He’s resilient, hard-working and detailed, and has a pretty impressive skills set.
“I look at two guys that are going to be on our opening day roster, and [they] sort of exemplify the things that we want to be. We talk about our culture, and a sixth-year pro in Matt Phillips, who’s been grinding in the AHL for a long time, and then another one in Lucas Johansen, who has been in this organization a long time; this is his seventh year. He has had various bumps along the road, from injuries to you name it and he’s probably through it. But he just kept pushing and grinding and trying to find – every day – a way to get better. And I had a front row seat to that for three years.
“Making an NHL team and being on an opening day roster is a big, big deal, and for those two guys, who have rode a long, long time on buses and grinded and still kept their eye on this moment, it’s pretty special.”
The achievements of Johansen and Phillips are impressive to some of the Washington veterans, too.
“It was a great camp,” says Washington winger T.J. Oshie. “It was difficult, but like a fun difficult. 14 A lot of camp was a lot of odd man rushes, one on ones and [one on] twos, battle, but [with] speed and there's just an element of fun in there, which made for very competitive camp.
“Some guys that as older guys – and just the organization in general – have been looking forward to having that quality summer to come in and make this squad, have done that. So hats off to the young bucks that have earned their spot, and really earned it. They had phenomenal camps. Amazing people, never complained, just always came in and did their work. It’s great to have them.”
Lastly, happy birthday – of sorts – to the Capitals. It was on this date in 1974 that the Capitals embarked upon their ill-fated inaugural season, one in which they managed to win just eight of 80 games (8-67-5). Washington absorbed the first of those 67 setbacks 49 years ago tonight at Madison Square Garden, where the Rangers doubled up the Caps by a 6-3 count.
