All Down The Line

Going into the 2022-23 season, the Caps knew they'd be without both Nicklas Backstrom and Tom Wilson for extended periods of time while the two recovered from offseason surgeries. After a slow start without their two stalwarts - and with other key pieces missing for varying lengths of time, too - the Caps got right with an 11-2-2 December as their two stars edged closer to returning.

Since Backstrom and Wilson returned to the lineup on Jan. 8 after missing the first 42 games of the season, the Caps are 2-3-0. The first two games were a bit choppy, and the resulting line and personnel shuffles were puzzling to some. But drilling down a bit deeper, the Caps have played much better over most of the game's 60 minutes in each of their last three games, despite dropping two of the three.
It's a short sample size to be sure, but after two uneven outings in Backstrom and Wilson's first two games back, the Caps have attacked and created and generated in the offensive zone, and they have controlled possession and territory over the last three games, as the duo gradually regains its timing and game speed. The Caps have controlled 59.34% of all 5-on-5 shot attempts in those three games, though it should be noted that the scoreboard was a factor in that as well; Washington trailed for most of that time. But the Caps still controlled 55.16% of the 5-on-5 shot attempts when the score was tied or within goal either way.
The lineup has been in a state of flux over that span as Caps coach Peter Laviolette reintegrates two stars into the mix, which has resulted in three different players - Lars Eller, Anthony Mantha and Dylan Strome - being scratched for the first time this season. Mantha has sat out three games while the other two have been parked for one game each.
A lower body injury to Nic Dowd on Monday in New York has sidelined him for a spell, and the Caps have recalled forward Aliaksei Protas from AHL Hershey to accompany the team on its upcoming trip out west. Protas appeared in each of Washington's first 41 games this season before being loaned to Hershey when Backstrom and Wilson returned. Once again, the Caps are carrying 14 healthy forwards.
Ahead of Tuesday's loss to Minnesota, Laviolette altered the lines once again. Putting Eller back in for Dowd was an easy move for the Caps' bench boss to make, but he altered some of the other lines as well in an effort to give Washington its best chance of getting a win against a heavy and more rested Minnesota club. Most notably, Mantha was scratched and Nicolas Aube-Kubel drew back into the lineup for the first time in five games, installed on the right side of Washington's top line with Alex Ovechkin and Dylan Strome. Center Evgeny Kuznetsov, a top six player for most of his tenure in D.C., was inserted in the middle of what was the Caps' fourth line as they ran their paces in pregame warmups, with Marcus Johansson on the left side and Garnet Hathaway on the right.
Although the Caps dominated play for most of the night, the Wild won with a trio of second period goals, all of them from defensemen, all of them on point shots with screens that came on extended defensive zone shifts for Washington. The fourth Wild goal was a late empty-netter, but the Caps had the better of possession and territory all night, despite failing to pull a standings point, so the shuffling at least appeared to have had the desired effect of giving the team its best chance to win that game that night.
After the loss, Laviolette explained some of his reasoning for the moves.
"We wanted to make sure that after playing [the previous] night, that we came back and we had speed on every line, and we had physicality," says Laviolette. "Minnesota is a heavier team in the League, and they've got some guys that play a heavier game. So it kind of set up for [Aube-]Kubel to come in for me. I just thought, 'That's his game; he's fast, he's physical.' He got in a scrap, his line scored a goal, and I thought he came in and he had a positive impact on the game."
And although Kuznetsov was in the middle of what was the Caps' fourth line in warmups, he led all Washington centers with 17:46 in ice time. Laviolette essentially rolled four lines against the Wild; the four Caps pivots in Tuesday's game ranged from 12:37 in even-strength ice time on the low end (Eller) to 14:00 on the high end (Backstrom).
"When you look at Kuzy's minutes, it's kind of the wording that you want to use," says Laviolette. "When you have four balanced lines, just to roll them because we played [in New York the previous] night and we wanted to make sure that we had fresh bodies playing against a team that did not play [the previous] night and was going to be ready. So we wanted to make sure that we were fresh with our lines and able to compete. With regard to Mantha, it was just a coach's decision."
With Protas' arrival, the Caps again will need to sit two of them every night. That situation led to lines being altered a great deal, but the resulting combinations have been mostly effective. With a trio of forwards who are new to the organization this season in Strome, Aube-Kubel and Sonny Milano - the latter two who did not have the benefit of a training camp with the Caps, don't forget - none of them has had the opportunity to play with Backstrom or Wilson until now. Laviolette has liked the fit of Milano with his two returning stars; that trio has stuck for two games now and has been effective.
With 35 games remaining in the regular season, we're sure to see many more lineup and personnel changes between now and then. Ideally the Caps would get healthier between now and then, too, but that seems like wishful thinking given the way the last two seasons have gone.
Lineup changes are made for a number of reasons, as are changes in the lines. Those include - but are not limited to - injury, ineffectiveness, opponent, the schedule, the need to spark or motivate a player or players, the need to send a message or a wake-up call to a player of players. For well over 100 consecutive games now, Laviolette has had to make do with less than a full deck of players, and too often he has had far less than a full deck with which to work, and many times he didn't have much in the way of "choices" from night to night. This current lineup challenge is much preferable to the previous ones.
"We've got a lot of players that are playing well right now," Caps GM Brian MacLellan stated in a conversation days ahead of the return of Backstrom and Wilson. "So it's going to get competitive real quick for ice time and for roles. There are going to have to be some tough decisions that have to be made, but I think it's a good thing."
Remember also that a number of key Washington players are in the last years of their current contracts, a list that includes seven forwards and seven defensemen, with only Strome, Alex Alexeyev and Martin Fehervary as restricted free agents among the total of 14. The salary cap is expected to remain relatively flat for next season as well, so available dollars will again be limited this summer. The best way to get paid in the NHL is to produce - as many of those impending free agents are doing this season - or at the very least, to have "a positive impact on the game," to borrow from Laviolette's postgame assessment of Aube-Kubel.
Washington is certain to have an interest in resigning several of its impending free agents. But how many of them and which ones could hinge upon how things turn out between now and next spring. So far, things are cool on the contract extension front.
"It's been hard to do that," says MacLellan. "We've got guys we like, but again we need to play it out here to make sure on the injury front. Are we good health-wise? We've got some high-end guys that have high salaries, and we have to figure out where they're at before we make any decisions or spend any money. And we've got guys that we like here, and we tell their representatives that we like them. Our intention is to bring some of them back, but team success and health all play factors in our decisions going forward."
The Caps have a number of hungry hockey players angling for their next contracts, and for the first time in quite some time, their list of wounded is under five; they're still without Dowd, Connor Brown, John Carlson and Carl Hagelin. If they find themselves with an excess or a need between now and the March 3 NHL trade deadline, they may have the maneuverability to make something work. But first, they need to identify those areas of excess and need - if they exist - and to see where their overall health situation is as the deadline draws nearer.
"We're going to have to see how everybody comes back, and how healthy everybody is, and see how the lines shake out," says MacLellan. "I think we have a pretty deep group of forwards all of a sudden if everybody comes back and is healthy and can play at a high level. We've got some time to figure this out.
"I think that's the good thing about Nick coming back now, is we get time to see him and he gets time to adapt. We'll figure out where he fits in over the next eight weeks. And Tom, too. Tom is going to need some time. That's a lot of time off with the ACL thing, so he'll need some time, too. But I think we'll get to see how it all evolves before the deadline. We've got plenty of time before the deadline, to have a plan or identify a need that we need to fill in."
In the meantime, they will - as Laviolette is fond of saying - "play the hand they've been dealt." Over a six-month, 82-game season, that hand changes - shuffles, if you will - constantly, on the ice and off the ice, during games and between games. All you can do is control what you can control.
"Peter has been great," says MacLellan. "It's never, 'What don't we have?,' it's 'How do we make it work?' He has that attitude. Even when we were struggling, he's always like, "How do we make it better?' He has a good mental approach as a coach to get through this. His whole time here, basically, we've had injuries, changing lineups, COVID, injuries to key guys, and key guys out for extended periods of time. And he has found ways to get through and make it work, not dwell on it, and not use it as an excuse. Part of it is his experience, and part of it is the way he's built. That's the way he thinks, and I respect the way he approaches it."