Oct. 24 vs. Buffalo Sabres at Capital One Arena
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 The Fan, Capitals Radio Network
Buffalo Sabres (4-4-2)
Washington Capitals (5-4-0)
Saturday night’s skirmish between the Caps and the Buffalo Sabres pits a pair of teams coming into the game on the heels of bad beats in their previous contests. Washington dropped a 5-2 decision to winless Los Angeles on Tuesday night at Capital One Arena, and a night later, the Sabres suffered a 3-1 setback on home ice to the Philadelphia Flyers. For Philly, that win was its third in succession after losing nine straight games (0-6-3) to start the season.
Washington has had to sit with Tuesday’s loss for several days now; the Caps practiced on Wednesday and took Thursday off. And when they reconvened for Friday morning’s practice session at MedStar Capitals Iceplex, they discovered they were missing a big piece from their blueline.
After participating in Wednesday’s practice, defenseman Vincent Desharnais suffered an attack of appendicitis, and he underwent an appendectomy and will be sidelined for the next 4-6 weeks. It’s the third “non-hockey ailment” to sideline a Washington skater in the team’s first nine games; Pierre-Luc Dubois has missed the last five games because of illness and Justin Sourdif has missed the last two games because of illness.
Both Dubois and Sourdif were full participants in Friday’s practice, but goaltender Logan Thompson missed both the Wednesday and Friday practices because of a lower body injury.
“Logan is day-to-day; we’ll see how he is [Saturday],” begins Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “Sourdif practiced fully today. Dubois practiced fully, so we’ll see where they’re at, talking to [head athletic trainer Jason Serbus] and as we plan for [Saturday] night against Buffalo. Desharnais, as everybody knows, is out; so he’ll be out for the foreseeable future.”
Any residual roster moves related to the possible recall of a goaltender and/or a defenseman to address the absence of Desharnais and the possible absence of Thompson will be discussed Friday afternoon among the staff and the hockey operations department.
“And I don’t want to waste your time with corresponding moves, call-ups and that,” Carbery adds. “I haven’t spoken to [senior vice president and general manager] Chris [Patrick] yet today and Serbs, so a lot of those conversations will dictate where we go, goaltender-wise, defenseman-wise, callup-wise.”
Through the first nine games of his career as a Capital, the 6-foot-7 Desharnais had been arguably Washington’s best defender. He was averaging a career best 19:25 per night in ice time, and his average of 3:34 per game in shorthanded ice time ranks sixth among all NHL defensemen with at least six games played.
Among all NHL defensemen with at least 125 minutes of even-strength ice time, Desharnais’ goals for rate of 78.57 percent ranks fifth. Desharnais has put up those numbers despite taking just 19.23 percent of his face-offs in the offensive zone, the lowest figure among the League’s top 34 defensemen in goals for pct., according to Natural Stat Trick.
“It’s a huge hole,” says Carbery. “Matt Roy comes back [from a lower body injury], and now Vinny is out, and I just thought he did such a good job in Matt Roy’s absence, and brought us a lot of really solid, hard, defensive-minded minutes that was helping us a lot penalty kill-wise, at 5-on-5, playing with one of our [offensive] defensemen in Cole [Hutson], and that’s a big, big role. So, that’s a big hole to fill.”
With Rasmus Sandin still sidelined after off-season knee surgery, the Caps have yet to see their full complement of blueliners on the ice at any point in the young season. Roy was injured in the second game of the season, and he just returned for the Los Angeles game on Tuesday.
Top-pair blueliner Jakob Chychrun has averaged over 20 minutes of ice time in each of the last 10 of his 11 NHL seasons, and his 24:38 figure this season is the highest of his career and well above his career average of 21:35.
“It's unfortunate with the injury bug,” says Chychrun. “To start, obviously a couple big injuries, and then we get healthy up front, and now we’ve got Vinny out. It seems like something's always happening, but that's going to happen throughout the season. And I guess if we get healthy for the last half of the year, we'll take it now versus then, so hopefully we're getting all those bounces out now, and we can continue to get healthier and healthier as the year goes on.
“Obviously, it's going to be great to get Sandy back, get Vinny back, and having Roy back is great. I think for me personally, I felt just okay to start the year; I haven't felt great. I was battling a couple little things at the start of the year personally, and I’m starting to feel better now, so I'm excited to start to feel a little bit more like myself. And obviously, the team is relying on me a bit more, and I've felt like I've had a lot better to give. Hopefully now I can start to give them a little bit more, and just continue to try to put ourselves in good positions to win. We've been in most games, but I think as a group, we can continue to get better and really take teams out of games by the third period. I think we're capable of that, so we're continuing to work towards that.”
One major sidelight to Saturday’s game against the Sabres is Washington winger Alex Tuch going up against his former Buffalo teammates for the first time on the four-month anniversary of the June 24 sign-and-trade swap that sent him to Washington. Tuch, a native of Syracuse, NY, grew up as a Sabres fan and he spent the last five seasons of his career with Buffalo, putting up 309 points (139 goals, 170 assists) in 360 games.
Drafted by the Minnesota Wild in the first round (18th overall) in the 2014 NHL Draft, Tuch debuted with the Wild in 2016-17. He went to Vegas in a trade ahead of the expansion draft in the summer of 2017, and was subsequently swapped to Buffalo in the Nov. 4, 2021 trade that sent Jack Eichel from Buffalo to Vegas. He has faced former employers before, but Saturday figures to feel vastly different from facing the Wild and the Golden Knights for the first time after being dealt.
“I thought we had a pretty special group there, and it'll be a little bit different,” says Tuch of facing his Sabres teammates for the first time. “Being in Vegas, I was traded as a younger guy. And in Buffalo, now getting traded/moving on as an older guy, it's a little bit different. [There are] a lot of guys that I've mentored there on Buffalo, and I spent a lot of time with, and we're really close group. It will be a little bit different, and I think that first game against Vegas, a lot of the narrative was with [Eichel] and everything with that regard. So, it's a little bit more pressure on me this time around.
“But I'm excited; I’m going to dinner with a big group of guys tonight … So, I’m going to get some sushi tonight with the guys, and it'll be good to see them and hopefully hear some new stories. But it’s just a lot of excitement. A little nerves, but mostly excitement.”
Tuch helped the Sabres end the lengthiest playoff drought in franchise history last spring. Buffalo pushed past Boston in the first round – earning its first playoff series win since 2007 – before falling a game shy of reaching the Eastern Conference Final series, dropping a seven-game set to the Canadiens.
This season, the Sabres are all even at 4-4-2 through their first 10 games. Buffalo ranks near the bottom of the NHL in both special teams, and it has yielded an average of 3.6 goals against per game, seventh highest in the circuit.
After opening the season with two wins in three games, the Sabres have won just two of seven (2-3-2) since, and two of their four victories on the season were achieved in overtime.
