Ain’t No Easy Way – Two games into their first-round, best of seven set, the Caps and Canadiens have been separated by a razor thin margin despite Washington’s 2-0 series lead. Both teams have had excellent goaltending, both teams have defended well, and both teams have gotten all of their scoring from their top six forward group.
Every year at this time, we are reminded of how important secondary scoring is in the playoffs, because each team’s top six tends to cancel out the other. So far in this series though, all the offense has come from the top six as both sides seek to stimulate that secondary scoring.
With the series shifting north to Montreal’s Bell Centre this weekend, the Habs are hopeful the change in venue can spark their squad to the improvements needed to come away with a Game 3 victory.
“You have to have fun with the hard; you have to embrace the hard,” says Montreal coach Martin St. Louis. “It’s such a fine line between winning and losing. Did we do enough that this series could be 1-1? Yeah, maybe. But it’s not. We’re down two.
“And to me, it’s about we know we have to do more; we know we have to find pockets in the game where we have to grab momentum quicker and we need to keep it longer. I feel like a game like tonight, this building, it’s going to be a fun environment. And enjoy that, but stay on task with what your job is, and feed off the energy, keep the mind in a good place and just go get some momentum as a group.”
And though neither side made a lineup change in the first two games, that could change for both sides in tonight’s Game 3 at Bell Centre in Montreal.
Habs winger Patrik Laine, who was benched for the third period of Game 2 in Washington, took a maintenance day and did not skate with the team at Friday’s morning skate. If Laine does not play tonight, Oliver Kapanen is a possibility to replace him, and it’s also possible – though perhaps not as likely – that Montreal would opt for an 11 forward/seven defenseman alignment.
And for Washington, injured forward Aliaksei Protas was on the ice with his teammates at Friday’s morning skate, though Washington coach Spencer Carbery remains noncommittal at this point.
“He is a possibility for tonight,” says Carbery.
Pressed further on whether it might be difficult to make a change in the lineup given the successful results to this point, Carbery concurs, but also notes that when Pro is ready to go, Pro will go.
“It’s something that I’ve thought about,” says the Caps’ bench boss. “And I think we have a lot of guys that are deserving to stay in the lineup, so it's difficult decisions for us as a coaching staff.
“But Pro has had a phenomenal season and he was a big part of our team. And so you weigh those scenarios, but the second that Pro – if and when he's ready to play, and if it's tonight – he’ll go into the lineup.”
Four Horsemen – As is typical at this time of year, teams ride their horses hard and put them away wet. But two games into this series, there’s a bit of a difference in the deployment of defensemen by the Capitals and the Canadiens, in a series with little in the way of special teams time, at least to this point.
Washington has shown much more trust in its third pairing of Alex Alexeyev and Trevor van Riemsdyk than the Habs have displayed in their third duo of Jayden Struble and David Savard. And the corollary of that is that the Habs are – unsurprisingly – riding with their top four.
Among the defensemen who’ve played two playoff games to this juncture of the postseason, Montreal’s Mike Matheson leads the pack in 5-on-5 ice time (43:54), and partner Alexandre Carrier ranks third (42:42). Habs rookie Lane Hutson (42:37) and Kaiden Guhle (41:03) comprise the team’s second pairing, and they’ve both averaged more than 20 minutes a night just in 5-on-5 time. Hutson ranks fourth and Guhle sixth among those blueliners who’ve played two games to date.
It's just two games, a tiny sample size. But Hutson’s overall average of 25:36 ranks among the top 10 for all rookie defensemen since 1995-96. Hutson ranks eighth, nestled between seventh-place Erik Karlsson (25:52 in six games with Ottawa in the 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs) and ninth place Miro Heiskanen (25:31 with Dallas in 2019), so the Habs rookie defender is keeping some pretty good company.
And according to moneypuck.com, Hutson has logged 41.8% percent of Montreal’s possible ice time to this point of the series, placing him seventh among all NHL blueliners in the 2025 playoffs. Matt Roy leads Washington in the same department at 40.1%, placing him 17th among all defensemen.
Meanwhile, the Habs’ third pairing of Jayden Struble (24:36, ranks 44th) and David Savard (17:52, ranks 48th) is deployed much more sparingly at even strength. Struble and Savard are frequently deployed with one of the Habs’ top four defenders; they’ve skated just 11:38 together in the two games to date.
On the Washington side of the ledger, Roy’s 43:25 at 5-on-5 ranks second behind only Matheson, and Rasmus Sandin is second on the squad – and seventh among those in the League with two games – at 39:42. Jakob Chychrun’s 36:33 ranks 14th and John Carlson’s 34:37 ranks 19th.
van Riemsdyk has logged 30:22 and Alexeyev 28:13 to rank 28th and 35th, respectively. Washington’s sixth defenseman is playing more 5-on-5 minutes than Montreal’s fifth defenseman in the early going, and the TVR and Alexeyev pairing has acquitted itself well. The Caps’ third pair is controlling 59.62 percent of all shot attempts and 80 percent of high danger scoring chances in just over 25 minutes together in two games, ranking seventh among all defensive pairings that have logged at least 15 minutes together in these playoffs.
It's been four years since Sandin got his first taste of the Stanley Cup playoffs with Toronto in 2021. The Leafs were bounced in a seven-game first-round series with Montreal that spring, and Sandin skated in five of those seven games, averaging just 13:13 per night as a third-pairing defenseman. Now, he is drawing top four minutes with Washington, even though his Stanley Cup playoff experience still numbers in the single digits, game wise.
Last season, Sandin was injured, and he missed three of the Caps’ four playoff games, skating 20:44 in his only postseason match. Coming into this postseason, the 25-year-old Sandin had just those half-dozen playoff games to his credit.
“It’s just knowing a little bit more of what to expect out there,” Sandin says of this, his third foray into the Stanley Cup playoffs. “I remember the first time I did it, it was against Montreal. I think since then, I’ve just evolved a lot as a player and as a person.
“And then obviously, just getting the first taste of playing playoffs, you get good taste of how the game is actually being played; it's more physical, it's at a higher pace, and everything is just essentially on another level. It’s something to just be prepared for and something I expected going into this series, and I’m happy I had the experience before.
“And yeah, every single game now is just a lot of fun to play.”
In The Nets – After missing Washington’s last seven regular season games with an upper body injury sustained on April 2 in Raleigh, Logan Thompson has managed to hit the ground running in his return to action. He stepped back into the crease after an absence of nearly three weeks and won each of the first two games of the series in Washington, forging a 1.47 GAA and a .951 save pct. in the process.
Thompson has stopped 58 of 61 shots, permitting just two goals at even strength.
“His competitiveness, and we see that on display,” says Carbery of the 28-year-old Calgary native. “We are fortunate to be able to watch him at practice every day. He competes with the guys. What you saw – especially in Game 2 in the third period – is that’s him competing his absolute butt off to try to prevent pucks from going into the net, and to win us a game.
“And we see that every day, and we’ve seen that all season long from him; it’s why he has the record that he has, and we’ve seen those moments along the way. For our group, we would like to give him less opportunities to make a big save. But when we need him to bail us out in a key situation, he’s going to give his teammates everything he’s got in those moments. He is going to flail out a leg, he is going to dive across the crease, he is going to do everything he can to make the save, to help win us a hockey game and help his teammates win a hockey game.”
Thompson entered the 2025 playoffs with four games worth of previous Stanley Cup playoff experience, but that’s four more games than Montreal’s Sam Montembeault came in with. And two games in, Montembeault has also been excellent.
He has stopped 58 of 63 shots in two games, resulting in a 2.49 GAA and a .921 save pct. The two goals he surrendered in Wednesday’s Game 2 came a minute apart in the second period, and he has yet to yield a third period goal in the series against a Washington team that finished third in the NHL with 105 goals in the game’s final frame.
All Lined Up – Here’s how the Capitals and the Canadiens might look for Friday night’s Game 3 of the best-of-seven set between the two teams:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 72-Beauvillier
24-McMichael, 80-Dubois, 43-Wilson
88-Mangiapane, 20-Eller, 9-Leonard
22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 16-Raddysh
Defensemen
6-Chychrun, 74-Carlson
3-Roy, 38-Sandin
27-Alexeyev, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Extras
25-Bear
33-Stevenson
52-McIlrath
53-Frank
Out/Injured
15-Milano (upper body)
19-Backstrom (hip)
21-Protas (lower body)
42-Fehervary (lower body)
77-Oshie (back)
MONTREAL
Forwards
13-Caufield, 14-Suzuki, 20-Slafkovsky
11-Gallagher, 28-Dvorak, 17-Anderson
92-Laine, 15-Newhook, 93-Demidov
51-Heineman, 71-Evans, 40-Armia
Defensemen
8-Matheson, 45-Carrier
21-Guhle, 48-Hutson
47-Struble, 58-Savard
Goaltenders
35-Montembeault
75-Dobes
Extras
55-Pezzetta
72-Xhekaj
91-Kapanen
Out/Injured
31-Price (lower body)
77-Dach (lower body)
