Back Home – Fresh from a fairly triumphant (3-1-1) five-game road trip, the Caps return home where they will play eight of their next 10 games, starting with tonight’s heavyweight tilt with the Winnipeg Jets. Washington enters tonight’s game as the beasts of the east, and the Jets are the best of the west. Although Winnipeg has one more point than Washington going into tonight’s game, the Caps have played two fewer games than the Jets, and Washington owns the higher points percentage.
The Caps and Jets are the top two teams in the NHL in goals for and goals against, with the Jets leading in the former and the Caps leading in the latter category.
“A great match-up, we’re looking forward to it,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “It’s a real good hockey team, on home ice, Saturday night, the table is set.”
As it faces the Jets in the front end of a two-game homestand – Florida visits on Tuesday – Washington is seeking to extend a 12-game point streak on home ice (9-0-3).
Two Of A Mind – Fifty-one games into the 2024-25 NHL season, the Caps are excelling at many aspects of their game, but today we’d like to shine some light on one of those aspects that only occasionally comes to the fore, and that’s Washington’s 5-on-3 power play. This past Tuesday night in Calgary, Dylan Strome snapped a 1-1 tie late in the second period with a 5-on-3 power play goal, Washington’s fourth of the season. Only Chicago and Vegas (five each) have more.
The Caps have clicked on four of six two-man advantage opportunities this season, scoring those four goals in 4 minutes and 24 seconds worth of 5-on-3 time this season.
Strome’s 5-on-3 tally in Calgary was particularly impressive, because it came just 18 seconds after the 5-on-3 commenced, and because the Caps went right to work, paying no heed to the typical 5-on-3 format of passing the puck around the perimeter until a desirable shot lane or seam pass opportunity presents itself, then jamming bodies toward the net for a rebound opportunity or a recovery.
Strome won the offensive zone face-off against Calgary’s Mikael Backlund, and the Caps went to work, with John Carlson stationed at center point, Jakob Chychrun on the flank to his right and Alex Ovechkin on the flank to Carlson’s left. (Ovechkin has two and Chychrun has one of Washington’s other three goals at 5-on-3 this season.) Tom Wilson was parked between the circles in the “bumper” area, and Strome was down low, just off the left post.
With Chychrun in possession of the puck in the middle of the right circle, and with Calgary’s right side defenseman (Rasmus Andersson) cheating just a bit toward Ovechkin on that side of the ice, the defenseman looked toward Ovechkin before dishing the puck back to Carlson. Chychrun then drifted back down low on the right side, giving Washington three bodies in a line above goaltender Dustin Wolf, but below defenders Andersson and MacKenzie Weegar.
With the puck, Carlson drifted down toward the top of the right circle, roughly where Ovechkin was on the opposite side. As he crept into the top of the circle, Carlson issued a sharp, no-look pass through a seam resulting from Andersson cheating up toward Ovechkin. That pass went directly to Strome’s tape, but as a left shot stationed at the left post, he didn’t have much of a shooting angle, nor did he have a lot of time, as Wolf slid over and Andersson and Weegar quickly tried to close toward the crease.
Although he had viable passing options with Chychrun at the right post and Wilson at the top of the paint – both with their sticks on the ice and prominently presented – Strome also realized he probably had enough time to go to his backhand and tuck a shot under the bar, which he expertly did, just as Andersson administered a cross-check to his lower back, too late.
“I think it just depends on how they play it, too,” says Carlson, who, as a guy who also defends 5-on-3 power plays, has a strong understanding of the reads that apply in the situation. “I think it was Andersson who was standing pretty far out there. Usually, those guys are on lines where they’re going back and forth when [the puck] comes around and goes back, and so they’re obviously anticipating shots.
“There’s a lot of different things you can do on a 5-on-3, but they’re anticipating we’ll cheat on out to shots as they come, but the way that they played us was more like a 5-on-4, where that backside guy is going to take care of Ovi more than he isn’t kind of thing. So you’re just trying to find different areas of the ice to exploit at that point, and see what’s open after that. And finding that seam and Strome being a lefty, he’s got to make a good play after, because he can’t just shoot it.”
That’s how Carlson saw it. Here’s Strome’s thoughts on the play.
“It’s different,” begins Strome, “because obviously on the 5-on-4, they try to take away Ovi a lot. We don’t usually see it on the 5-on-3 as much. Obviously, we were trying to get [Ovechkin] a one-timer, so I think Johnny was selling [pass] it a little bit to Ovi, and Andersson was kind of reaching out, and reaching out. And I think he had me for a while, but he wanted to make sure there were no sticks in the way.
“But it was a hard pass, so I just tried to corral it, and when you’re that in tight to the net, you’re either trying to put it home or send someone back door for an open net. I know I had a couple of guys open back door; their sticks were right there. But I just tried to put it home. It was a great play all around, because if the guy takes me, then we have Ovi for a one-timer, which we were trying to set up.
“It’s a little bit of an interesting set up because we have three righties and two lefties, and so we’re just trying to find a way of figuring it all out. And with Johnny and Ovi up top, it means you’re usually going to have a lefty on the opposite side. So you just let your skill take over and go from there.”
Caps coach Spencer Carbery was pleased with the work of the five-man unit in that all-important situation. Strome and Chychrun have both delivered game-winning goals via the 5-on-3 this season.
“Credit to our five guys,” says Carbery. “Because you could tell what [the Flames] were doing with their 5-on-3 [PK]; they were sitting on [Ovi]. And you can do that 5-on-4, but if you do that 5-on-3, it opens up a passing seam which our guys recognized right away. We didn’t get it to [Ovechkin] right away – I can’t remember who the first guy was who was holding it [Chychrun], that was about to pass it through that seam, because it was wide open.
“They just waited another second, found it, Stromer was wide open on the backside. That’s an underrated great play by Stromer to not just rip that thing, to have a little bit of poise there, hold it, take it to his backhand, and great finish there.”
On the opposite side of the 5-on-3 coin, the Caps have also excelled. Washington is one of nine NHL teams that has yet to be nicked by a 5-on-3 goal from the opposition; the Caps have successfully navigated their way through all five two-man disadvantage situations this season, totaling 3 minutes and 38 seconds in aggregate length.
Bandages & Scars – Caps defenseman Martin Fehervary has had a typically sturdy season in 2024-25. Since becoming an NHL regular at the start of the 2021-22 season, Fehervary’s average of 8.75 hits/60 ranks third among all NHL defensemen with at least 250 games played over that span.
Among those blueliners in the top 10 in hits/60, Fehervary is one of six who are also blocking five or more shots per 60 minutes across those four seasons as well, joining Radko Gudas, Alexander Romanov, Jacob Trouba, Jake McCabe and Ilya Lyubushkin in that distinction. Of those half dozen blueliners, the 25-year-old Fehervary is the second youngest – Romanov is three months younger – and one of only two who are still in their twenties.
An NHL defenseman of that ilk – one who routinely lays the body and gets in the way of enemy shots – can be a magnet for mayhem, and that’s certainly been the case for Fehervary this season. His face typically attracts a new scar before the old ones have healed and faded, and in the second game of the team’s recent 12-day road trip – in Seattle just over a week ago – Fehervary caught a puck that ramped up off a teammate’s stick and caught him just above his right eye.
He was aided off the ice and went to the room for some stitches, but he was back on the ice in the third period to help his teammates usher their sixth straight victory to the final buzzer. The resulting black eye has diminished now, but there are still fading reminders of relatively recent pucks and sticks that have come in contact with Fehervary’s youthful face.
“I usually had pretty good luck before this,” says Fehervary. “I had a couple of cuts obviously on my face, but this year especially, it seems like everything is going toward my face. I’m not really having a good time with this, but that’s hockey, right? Like sometimes, I have a little bit more luck. But right now, it’s not going my way. But that’s my game, blocking the shots and playing hard. And my game feels like it’s coming along.”
An old hockey adage holds that you need a couple hundred games to come into your own as an NHL defenseman, and Fehervary – who turned 25 just before the start of the season – is slated to play his 269th game tonight. But he’s been that rugged and fearless defender who hits and blocks shots without compunction, and who defends with a level of tenacity that tends to rankle those he is defending.
Frequently partnered with Matt Roy this season, the tandem has been on the ice for eight goals for and just five goals against in the 284 minutes and 2 seconds they’ve played together this season, this despite the lowest percentage of offensive zone starts (17.39) of all Washington blueline pairings.
“It’s not just about us,” says Fehervary, of himself and Roy. “I think the whole team has done a really good job in the defensive zone. Everyone knows what we are supposed to do, everyone knows the structure and the details in our game have been really, really excellent. We know where we should be and what we are supposed to do, and that’s a really big key.”
In The Nets – Named the NHL’s second star for the month of January, Logan Thompson gets the net for Washington tonight. Thompson went 8-0-1 last month in nine appearances (eight starts) with two shutouts, a 1.48 GAA and a .947 save pct. His excellence in the crease stretches much further back than last month; he has yielded two or fewer goals against in 19 of his last 23 starts, dating back to Nov. 2.
Over his career against Winnipeg, Thompson is 3-1-0 in five appearances (four starts) with a 2.90 GAA and a .911 save pct.
For the Jets, we’ll see Connor Hellebuyck in net tonight. The four-time Vezina Trophy finalist and two-time Vezina winner (2019-20 and 2023-24) is now in his 10th NHL season, and he has already rolled past the 300-win plateau. With 32 wins this season, Hellebuyck leads the NHL. He also leads the circuit with six shutouts and a 2.00 GAA, which is currently the best single-season mark of his career to date.
Lifetime against Washington, Hellebuyck is 5-5-2 in a dozen games – all starts – with two shutouts, a 2.23 GAA and a .925 save pct.
All Lined Up – Here’s how we believe the Capitals and Jets might look on Saturday night in the District:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 43-Wilson
21-Protas, 80-Dubois, 24-McMichael
16-Raddysh, 20-Eller, 53-Frank
22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 88-Mangiapane
Defensemen
38-Sandin, 74-Carlson
42-Fehervary, 3-Roy
6-Chychrun, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Extras
13-Vrana
27-Alexeyev
52-McIlrath
Out/Injured
15-Milano (upper body)
19-Backstrom (hip)
77-Oshie (back)
WINNIPEG
Forwards
81-Connor, 55-Scheifele, 13-Vilardi
91-Perfetti, 7-Namestnikov, 27-Ehlers
62-Niederreiter, 15-Kupari, 22-Appleton
9-Iafallo, 19-Gustafsson, 73-Ford
Defensemen
44-Morrissey, 2-DeMelo
54-Samberg, 4-Pionk
64-Stanley, 6-Miller
Goaltenders
37-Hellebuyck
1-Comrie
Extras
14-Heinola
24-Fleury
93-Lambert
Out/Injured
17-Lowry (upper body)
36-Barron (upper body)