Meet Me Half Way – The Caps open up the second half of their 2024-25 regular season schedule tonight when they finish up a two-game homestand against the Montreal Canadiens, who will be finishing the first half of their own ’24-25 slate tonight in the District. Both the Caps and the Habs are starting off a set of back-to-backs tonight; the Caps play Saturday night in Nashville while the Canadiens return home to host the Dallas Stars.
Friday’s game concludes the three-game season’s series between the Caps and the Canadiens. Washington won by a 6-3 count here on Halloween night against the Habs, and the Caps needed to engineer a stirring third-period comeback to earn a 4-2 victory in Montreal on Dec. 7.
But the Canadiens that come to town tonight are different from the team the Caps saw earlier in the season. These Habs are hot.
“They’re playing real well,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “I think they’re 9-2-0 in their last 11 [close; they’re 8-2-0 in their last 10 games], and they’re playing really well. I feel like all their numbers have [climbed] and offensively, they’re really clipping.”
Over that last 10-game span, no team in the NHL is scoring more frequently than Montreal, which is averaging 3.90 goals per game over that stretch.
“And we find – when you go through the film – it’s all four lines and all three sets of [defensemen],” says Carbery. “They feel like they’ve got a lot of guys playing at a really high level, feeling good about themselves, and playing with confidence. It’s a good test for us, a really good test, playing against one of the hottest teams in the NHL.”
Frankie Machine – Since netting his first AHL goal on April 15, 2022, Ethen Frank has scored 80 goals in just 161 AHL games with the Hershey Bears, the most of any player on the team, and second most in the League over that span. With 20 goals in 35 games this season, Frank is second in the League in goals and he has already been named an AHL All-Star for the third consecutive campaign. Frank was tied for seventh in the AHL with 30 goals in 2022-23, and he was tied for eighth with 29 tallies in 2023-24.
Frank scores goals, and the Caps need scoring. On Friday morning, the Caps announced that they’ve recalled the 26-year-old Papillon, Neb. native from Hershey, and he will make his NHL debut with the Caps tonight against Montreal.
“I’m excited for him; it’s been a long road,” says Carbery. “First NHL game, he’s done a lot of great things inside this organization, he’s had a tremendous start to his professional career in Hershey and has earned every second of his moment tonight, so I’m real happy for him.”
In a corollary transaction, forward Ivan Miroshnichenko has been loaned to Hershey. Miroshnichenko has a goal and four points in 18 games with Washington this season.
“We just felt like the time was right, with where we’re at in the season, and the season that he has had, that being first and foremost,” says Carbery. “He just was named an all-star in the AHL for the third consecutive year, he already has 20 goals in the AHL once again, so he has just continued to prove that he is deserving of this opportunity.
“We just felt like as an organization, with Miro starting to be in and out of the lineup a little bit, and his minutes diminishing, we just want to be careful with that becoming a common theme, of him only playing nine minutes a night, sparingly, in and out of the lineup. We have big expectations for him in the organization, so we want to make sure that he is developing and getting the necessary minutes, playing time, situational playing time, puck touches, scoring chances, shots on goal and all that type of stuff in game action. And that was starting to diminish a little bit, so we felt like it was the appropriate time to make that flip, with Frank getting an opportunity.”
Had it not been for a late season injury Frank suffered with the Bears last season, he likely would have had his opportunity to debut late in the 2023-24 season. But the call came on Thursday, and he arrived here in time to participate in Friday’s morning skate.
“I don’t know if the word has been invented yet,” says Frank of learning of his recall. “It’s been nothing but pure joy and happiness for me so far.”
After completing his collegiate career at Western Michigan University, Frank signed an AHL deal with Hershey on April 11, 2022. Following a strong first season as a pro, the Caps inked Frank to a one-year entry-level deal March 2, 2022. During his time in the organization, Frank has played five NHL preseason games – two prior to last season and three more this past September – picking up an assist.
“I’ll lean on the preseason experience a lot,” says Frank. “Obviously, it wasn’t some of my best games, earlier in the year, and I learned a lot from it. I’ll be using that as an experience to hopefully help this team get a win tonight, for sure.”
Frank has been a productive scorer in Hershey for two and a half seasons now, and he has been an AHL ALL-Star in each of his three seasons in the League. In his first All-Star appearance at Laval in 2023, Frank won the CCM Fastest Skater event with a League-record time of 12.915 seconds. Frank is the first player ever to break the 13-second barrier in that event.
This season’s AHL All-Star Game and events are being held Feb. 2-3 at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, Calif., a building Frank is familiar with, having faced its occupants – the Coachella Valley Firebirds – in each of the last two Calder Cup Final series. In a perfect world, Frank would still be with the Caps then, and the AHL would need to find a replacement for him.
“It’s obviously a huge honor,” says Frank. “You don't get selected all the time, so I think three years in a row is special, especially being able to represent Hershey. I know that they probably want me to go skate a lap pretty fast, and so I think that's what the plan is. But either way, it'll be special to representing for sure.”
First things first, though, and tonight, Frank becomes just the sixth native of Nebraska to suit up and lace up the blades for a regular season NHL game.
“I’ve got a small army of seven or eight people coming,” says Frank, asked about getting family and friends to the District in time to witness his debut. “So I should be represented well out there.”
Everyone in the Washington room has been in Frank’s skates at some point earlier in their career.
“I would just say, just don't change anything,” says Caps center Dylan Strome. “He has had a tremendous couple years in Hershey with the goal scoring and how fast he can skate. That's what we need. We would love to get him a couple shots on net, use his speed and go wide, and just have fun. I don't think he needs to change anything. He's been a pro for a long time now – or long enough where he knows what it takes to be successful -- and I'm looking forward to watching him fly around the ice tonight.”
In The Nets – Charlie Lindgren starts tonight against Montreal, the team that gave him his start in the pros when they signed him as an undrafted free agent on March 30, 2016. He spent his first five seasons as a pro in the Montreal organization, seeing NHL action in each of those five seasons and playing in 24 games for the Habs.
Lindgren is seeking his 11th victory of the 2024-25 season, and he is also aiming to halt a personal four-game slide (0-2-2). Lifetime against the Habs, he is 3-1-0 in four appearances – all starts – with a 2.80 GAA and an .888 save pct.
For Montreal, we are expecting to see rookie Jakub Dobes between the pipes tonight. Sam Montembeault has been the No. 1 guy in Montreal this season, but Dobes was summoned from AHL Laval late last month, and he has made a big splash in just two starts thus far.
In his NHL debut against the Panthers in Florida on Dec. 28, Dobes spun a 34-save shutout to end the Panthers’ nine-game winning streak against the Habs. In the process, he joined Bob Perreault (12/17/55), Wayne Thomas (1/14/73) and Yann Denis (10/12/05) to become just the fourth goaltender in Habs’ history to record a shutout in his NHL debut.
Additionally, Dobes – a Czechia native who was Montreal’s fifth-round choice (136th overall) in the 2020 NHL Draft – is the third goaltender in NHL history to shutout the defending Stanley Cup champs in his NHL debut, and only the second to do so in a road game, joining Daren Puppa (11/1/85 at Edmonton) in that distinction.
In his second start – this past Saturday at Colorado – Dobes stopped 22 of the 23 shots he faced to earn a second straight victory, a 2-1 shootout triumph.
All Lined Up – Here’s our best guess as to how the Caps will look and how we believe the Canadiens might look on Friday night in Washington:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
21-Protas, 17-Strome, 8-Ovechkin
24-McMichael, 80-Dubois, 43-Wilson
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
79-Lindgren
48-Thompson
Extras
13-Vrana
27-Alexeyev
52-McIlrath
Out/Injured
15-Milano (upper body)
19-Backstrom (hip)
77-Oshie (back)
MONTREAL
Forwards
13-Caufield, 14-Suzuki, 20-Slafkovsky
15-Newhook, 77-Dach, 40-Armia
17-Anderson, 28-Dvorak, 11-Gallagher
51-Heineman, 71-Evans, 55-Pezzetta
Defensemen
48-Hutson, 8-Matheson
21-Guhle, 45-Carrier
47-Struble, 72-Xhekaj
Goaltenders
75-Dobes
35-Montembeault
Extras
None
Out/Injured
31-Price (knee)
58-Savard (upper body)
92-Laine (illness)
