Checkout Time In Vegas – The Caps conclude their 2023-24 season’s series with the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday night in Sin City. Behind a 35-save shutout by Charlie Lindgren on Nov. 14 in Washington, the Caps claimed a 3-0 victory in the first meeting between the two teams this season. Saturday’s game is the penultimate game in the Caps’ five-game western road trip; they’ll face the Coyotes in Arizona on Monday night before heading back to the District on Tuesday.
After playing three games in the previous four nights, the Caps enjoyed a day off in Vegas on Friday before reconvening for a morning skate on Saturday. Lindgren (body maintenance) did not skate on Saturday; assistant coach Brett Leonhardt suited up and took shots at the opposite end of the ice from Darcy Kuemper. The Caps have recalled Hunter Shepard from AHL Hershey and are vying to get him to Vegas in time for tonight’s tilt.
Tonight’s tilt in Vegas breaks the seal on a 14-game slate of December games for the Capitals.
High Powered – On Thursday night in Anaheim, Tom Wilson’s first NHL hat trick helped the Caps to a 5-4 win over the Ducks, and two of his tallies came on the power play. Those power-play goals broke a 12-game drought without an extra-man tally – the lengthiest dry spell in franchise history – and lifted the Caps to an 8.5% success rate for the season.
Despite its struggles scoring at both 5-on-5 and on the power play, Washington has forged a .650 points percentage at the 20-game mark of the season. That’s the second-best figure in the Metropolitan Division, fourth in the Eastern Conference and eighth in the League overall.
Three games into the team’s current road trip, the Caps’ power play is 2-for-8 on the journey to date, but it has looked better, created better looks, and has obviously finished a couple times, too. The structural alterations combined with some confidence from lighting the lamp should help lift the Caps higher on the extra-man ledger.
“We changed a lot of stuff up going into San Jose,” says Wilson. “New personnel and a new kind of system, and I thought it clicked right away. And then once you start making plays and once you start clicking a little bit, confidence comes with it, you move the puck quicker, and things start coming a little bit better offensively.”
“It’s one of those things where you’ve got to keep giving them new looks, you’ve got to keep working hard. I think our retrievals have been good, giving us a second chance to keep pucks in zone and keep a tired PK on the ice. And just everybody as a unit of five guys working for each other is the biggest thing. When you get disjointed a little bit, and you don’t have the confidence or the trust to make a quick play or a blind play, you’re not as effective. Knowing that the guys out there with you are going to work hard for you, get open, retrieve pucks, and snap it around goes a long way.”
The looks the Caps have had on the power play thus far on this trip are somewhat atypical from what we’ve come to expect from the power play over the years, although Caps’ captain Alex Ovechkin did ring a one-timer from the office off the iron on Monday night in San Jose. But many of the other opportunities – and both of the goals – have come from chances in tight, and second/third chances. But the entries and the retrievals are the bread and butter of the power play, and if those are up to par, the rest of the elements have a better chance of falling into place.”
“There's still some of the same concepts that we've seen for years, and that frankly the group has been very successful with,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “[Ovechkin] shooting from the flank, a shot/pass from the flank. But there's just other things that I think are important things, like the entry component, the puck recovery component; those are the keys for me.
“We have to start with that, and then we can get creative with [Ovechkin] moving around and some different looks with [Evgeny Kuznetsov] and different guys, where we move him from the net front to the backside, and some different stuff that we’ve looked at. Mostly, we're just trying to get some momentum with our power play, and last game is a huge step in the right direction, just to kind of get the monkey off the back. Okay, now let's focus on sustaining that and creating momentum for our team and all those things. Hopefully, those goals will help snowball that.”
I Walk The Line – Washington’s five-goal outburst on Thursday was its second-highest single game output of the season, and in addition to the two power-play goals, it featured a goal on a power move to the net from Anthony Mantha, a breakaway goal from Wilson and a tip-in of a point shot from the top of the paint from Nic Dowd, a goal on which Rasmus Sandin’s blueline work was impressive.
Sandin “walked the line” to get to the middle of the ice, then threw a bit of a shimmy to shake off a defender, opening up a lane with which to get the puck to the net.
“For me, I think it’s very important,” says Sandin of the skill of walking the line. “That’s supposed to be one of my strengths; I think I was struggling with it in the beginning of the year, to either shoot it, to find the net or even to find a lane. But then obviously the most important thing is to have guys in front of the net, because if Nic isn’t standing there, that puck is going right into the [goalie’s] chest, and then it’s a new face-off in the offensive zone.”
The diversity of the attack is important, too. The Caps need any kind of goals they can get, so to be able to score in different fashions is a positive indicator.
“It’s obviously nice to score in a lot of different ways,” says Sandin. “It’s not easy to score in this League, so it’s great. It’s great for Willie to get a hat trick too, in his 700th game. That’s awesome.”
“I thought that was a great night for us to sort of break out a little bit,” says Carbery. “Guys feel good about themselves, and we score in some different ways. We finish on a breakaway, which we’ve struggled to do this year. A tip goal with great net front [presence]; the [defense] get a shot through from Sandy to Nic Dowd, and there’s a double-layered screen.
“Things like that have been few and far between for us to be able to score in those situations. I think it helps, and hopefully we can grow off of that and it’s not just a one-off, and this is a consistent thing we can do on a nightly basis. It’s not always going to look that way, but if we can do that more consistently, we’re going to score more, and we’ll be rewarded more. Hopefully, that is a step in the right direction from a confidence and mindset standpoint for our individual players.”
In The Nets – Darcy Kuemper will be in net for Washington tonight. He earned his fifth victory of the season on Thursday night in Anaheim, stopping 28 of 32 shots to improve to 4-2-1 in his last seven starts. Lifetime against the Golden Knights, Kuemper is 6-6-3 with a shutout, a 2.26 GAA and a .931 save pct. in 16 appearances (15 starts).
For Vegas, we’re expecting to see Logan Thompson in net against the Caps. He has notched one-third of the Golden Knights' 15 victories on the season to date. Lifetime against the Capitals, Thompson is 3-1-0 with a 2.16 GAA and a .909 save pct. in four appearances (three starts).
All Lined Up – Here is how we believe the Capitals and Knights might look when they take the ice at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday night:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 43-Wilson
15-Milano, 92-Kuznetsov, 29-Lapierre
21-Protas, 24-McMichael, 39-Mantha
47-Malenstyn, 26-Dowd, 96-Aube-Kubel
Defensemen
42-Fehervary, 74-Carlson
38-Sandin, 57-van Riemsdyk
6-Edmundson, 3-Jensen
Goaltenders
35-Kuemper
79-Lindgren or 31-Shepard
Injured
19-Backstrom (upper body)
67-Pacioretty (torn Achilles’ tendon)
77-Oshie (upper body)
Scratches
27-Alexeyev
45-Phillips
46-Johansen
VEGAS
Forwards
49-Barbashev, 9-Eichel, 61-Stone
43-Cotter, 71-Karlsson, 81-Marchessault
21-Howden, 20-Stephenson, 22-Amadio
28-Carrier, 10-Roy, 55-Kolesar
Defensemen
17-Hutton, 7-Pietrangelo
3-McNabb, 6-Korczak
14-Hague, 2-Whitecloud
Goaltenders
36-Thompson
30-Patera
Injured
23-Martinez (lower body)
27-Theodore (upper body)
33-Hill (lower body)
90-Lehner (hip)
Scratches
16-Dorofeyev
94-Pachal
