Good Day Sunshine – The Caps’ four-game road trip continues in Tampa with a Saturday night tilt against the Lightning. The Caps started the trip with a 5-3 loss to the Penguins in Pittsburgh on Thursday in what was also the second game of a set of back-to-backs.
After arriving in Tampa in the wee hours of Friday morning, the Caps enjoyed a full day off in the Tampa sunshine yesterday before getting back at it tonight against the Lightning in their third game in four nights.
The Bolts are back home after forging a 2-1-0 mark on a three-game trip out west, culminating with a 6-3 win over the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday. The Lightning flew home from Sin City on Friday.
When the Caps edged the Lightning at home in overtime early this season, the Bolts were scuffling a bit. But they’ve taken flight since, winning six of their last season heading into tonight’s game. Beginning tonight, the Lightning will play each of its next six games in Florida, with five of the six coming on home ice. The next time the Bolts leave Florida will be two weeks from tonight when they travel to Washington to close out their three-game season series with the Caps.
Regardless of how the Lightning is playing at any given time, no Spencer Carbery coached team will be taking Tampa Bay lightly, and especially the Bolts’ power play, which hasn’t hit its stride yet, but did connect for a pair of goals in Thursday’s win in Vegas.
“You think I'm going to sell that power play short after years of experience watching [Nikita Kucherov] and the fellas go to work on the Leafs back in the day?” asks the Caps bench boss, rhetorically. “Yeah, we know the weapons there, and we know the challenges that it presents, and I could care less what their [power play] percentage is; you know what they're capable of doing. And our [penalty] kill right now is struggling, so it's not an ideal time to be facing probably as good a power play as there's been in the National Hockey League over the last 10 years, so we’re going to have our hands full. If we can limit that to one or two kills, that would be absolutely ideal and play into our favor.
“It's a good game tonight. I'm looking forward to playing these guys. To me – and this is my own personal opinion – the two best teams right now in the National Hockey League are the Colorado Avalanche and the Tampa Bay Lightning. And not just from the eyeball test, the numbers back that up, the roster construction. Those are the two best teams in the league, for my money, and we get to play one of them that's in our conference, in their building. Looking forward to the challenge tonight.”
The only loss the Lightning has suffered in its last seven games was in Colorado against the Avalanche, a 3-2 setback earlier this week.
Five Take Five – In spite of their struggles on special teams, the Caps are holding their own in the highly competitive and extremely tight Eastern Conference standings a month into the season. The foundation of the Caps’ success this season has been a sturdy game at 5-on-5 in all three zones.
Washington has permitted the fewest goals against (17) at 5-on-5, and its plus-13 goal differential is also tops in the NHL. The Caps have outshot the opposition at 5-on-5 in 11 of their 14 games this season, and they’ve been outscored just twice at 5-on-5 this season.
The Capitals have controlled 55.54 percent of all shot attempts at 5-on-5 this season, ranking third in the NHL behind only Colorado and Carolina, and their expected goals for of 36.56 also leads the NHL. Washington’s high danger goals for pct. of 68.18 is second only to that of the New York Rangers, and the Caps’ .900 high danger save pct. ranks third in the League.
“I think it's definitely a positive,” says Caps center Dylan Strome of the team’s play at evens. I think it’s probably a bit more than a positive; I feel like obviously it plays a huge role. The foundation of our 5-on-5 has been really good, so we’ve got to continue to build on that. We’ve got great goaltending, and we’ve got really good defenseman, and that's a great combination for a good 5-on-5.”
“It's all about being at the same page, helping each other, being together and work for each other,” says Caps forward Aliaksei Protas. “That's – I think – the key point of our success so far. Yeah, special teams haven't been great, but we know we can be good.
“We're a very good team. It's basically the like same personnel. We know where we can be. Now it's just time to push everyone forward and find that game back. I think we should be fine. We know how we can play; we’ve just got to get back to it.”
One area where the Capitals could stand to improve at 5-on-5 is in finishing more of their chances. While their expected goals at 5-on-5 is 36.56 through 14 games, their actual total is 30, suggesting they could have had an extra goal roughly every other game to this point of the campaign.
“When your special teams isn't playing well, you need more at 5-on-5,” says Strome. “And I feel like we've been doing a good job of getting chances and playing pretty solid hockey overall at 5-on-5. But it would be nice to get a few more in those areas, for sure. I think maybe we have a few guys that have yet to break out, and that's probably coming soon. Anytime you have a team that scored that many goals last year, and it's basically the same team we brought back this year, the goals are going to come, and they will come. It's really a matter of time, and I’m looking forward to seeing that this road trip.”
But as Carbery sagely notes, it’s also extremely important to not let the defensive end of their 5-on-5 game sag while chasing more offense.
“There are a few little things,” says Carbery, asked about burying more chances at 5-on-5. “I think I've always been a believer if you put yourself in as many possible situations where you're getting those looks, eventually they'll go in. Are there small things that you can do to make it more difficult on goaltenders and capitalize in those situations? No doubt. So, we talk about those things, whether it's traffic, whether it's bearing down, whether it's making sure that we're not missing the net, so you give yourself a chance.
“But are we talking about anything differently than we did last year, when we were finishing at the highest rate in the National Hockey League? No. So some of this is ebbs and flows, and some of it is confidence, and some of it is guys’ puck luck and all that sorts of stuff. Now we’ve just got to continue and stay the course and make sure that we're creating enough of those looks each game, and hopefully guys can get hot and pucks will start to go in for them, and then also with our special teams and making sure that we're tight defensively.
“That's the key for me, is when you're not scoring at a high clip, if you start to deviate from some of your defensive detail, now you're in trouble, and now you're going to lose hockey games. And if we're tight without the puck, we'll have a chance to win every single game, whether we score or not. We can win a game 1-0, 2-1, no problem. We did that two years ago for three quarters of the season. But if your defensive detail, and your away from the puck and you're without the puck, habits start to slip, now you're giving up three [goals], now you’re not winning that hockey game, so that's important for us as we go through this stretch.”
Back In The Saddle Again – On Saturday afternoon, the Caps announced they’ve loaned forward Spencer Smallman to AHL Hershey and have activated forward Ethen Frank from injured reserve after he missed four games with an upper body injury sustained late in the Caps’ Oct. 28 game in Dallas.
Frank is expected to replace Sonny Milano in the Washington lineup tonight. Smallman joined the team in Buffalo last Saturday, but he was a healthy scratch during his week with Washington.
In The Nets – Logan Thompson is back between the pipes for Washington tonight, making his 10th start of the season. In the Capitals’ 6-1 win over St. Louis on Wednesday, Thompson became just the fifth NHL goaltender in the last 20 years to start the season wit nine straight starts in which he allowed two or fewer goals against. Included in that stretch is a 3-2 overtime victory over the Lightning in Washington on Oct. 14.
Among all goaltenders with at least five games played, Thompson is tops in both goals against average (1.45) and save pct. (.938) this season.
Lifetime against the Lightning, Thompson is 1-1-0 in two appearances – both starts – with a 2.00 GAA and an .892 save pct.
As usual, we are expecting to see Andrej Vasilevskiy in the net for the Lightning tonight. The 31-year-old Russian has stacked up eight straight seasons of 30 or more victories, and he led the NHL in games and minutes played last season.
Vasilevskiy enters tonight’s tilt with a 4-4-2 mark on the season with a 2.70 GAA and a .901 save pct. Lifetime against the Capitals, he is 11-11-2 in 24 appearances – all starts – with one shutout, a 3.10 GAA and a .903 save pct.
All Lined Up – Here’s how the Capitals and the Lightning might look on Saturday night in Tampa:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 72-Beauvillier
21-Protas, 24-McMichael, 43-Wilson
53-Frank, 29-Lapierre, 9-Leonard
22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 34-Sourdif
Defensemen
42-Fehervary, 74-Carlson
6-Chychrun, 3-Roy
38-Sandin, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Healthy Extras
15-Milano
47-Chisholm
52-McIlrath
Injured/Out
80-Dubois (lower body)
TAMPA BAY
Forwards
59-Guentzel, 21-Point, 86-Kucherov
38-Hagel, 17-James, 22-Bjorkstrand
28-Girgensons, 37-Gourde, 29-Holmberg
62-Finley, 93-Goncalves
Defensemen
77-Hedman, 90-Moser
27-McDonagh, 81-Cernak
51-D’Astous, 78-Lilleberg
43-D. Raddysh
Goalies
88-Vasilevskiy
31-Johansson
Healthy Extras
24-Crozier
42-Douglas
Injured/Out
20-Paul (upper body)
71-Cirelli (upper body)
