Feb. 24 vs. Florida Panthers at Amerant Bank Arena
Time: 6:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Stream: MonSports.net/Stream
Radio: 106.7 The Fan, Capitals Radio 24/7
Washington Capitals (26-21-8)
Florida Panthers (37-16-4)
For the first time in just over two months, the Caps will carry a three-game winning streak into their next game, an early evening affair with the Florida Panthers on Saturday in South Florida. Saturday’s game finishes up a two-game Florida trip for the Capitals, who stretched their winning streak to three with a 5-3 victory over the Lightning in Tampa on Thursday.
Like each of the two victories that preceded it, Thursday’s victory came with a cost to the Capitals. After losing the services of defenseman Martin Fehervary (lower body, week-to-week) in last Saturday’s win over the Canadiens and center Nic Dowd (upper body, day-to-day) in Tuesday’s triumph over the Devils, Washington lost veteran heart-and-soul winger T.J. Oshie in Thursday’s victory over the Lightning.
Midway through the third period, Oshie departed the game in obvious discomfort, needing to be helped from the ice to the bench, and then down the tunnel to the room as well. Just four games shy of hitting the 1,000 mark for his career, Oshie seems likely to be sidelined for a while. The Caps come home after Saturday's game, and they have a set of back-to-backs on Monday/Tuesday, hosting the Sens before traveling to Detroit for their final game in February.
Oshie did not join his teammates for their Friday practice session in South Florida. Late Friday afternoon, Washington announced the recall of forward Hendrix Lapierre from AHL Hershey.
“Obviously he left the game, and we’ll just continue to monitor him,” said Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery, following Friday’s practice. “I don’t think this is a skating today or tomorrow situation, but I don’t want to tell you anything definitively on timeline or anything like that. We’ll just continue to monitor.”
Carbery was then asked whether Oshie’s ailment might be less serious than originally feared.
“Yes and no; it’s just too early to tell,” he responded. “We’re just monitoring him, and we’ll know more in the near future.”
Injuries aside, the Caps continue to play smart, connected and assertive hockey, and in Thursday’s win they also overcame a fair amount of late adversity, managing to ride some massive waves of shifting momentum in the third, when two Tampa Bay goals in less than half a minute quickly erased a two-goal Washington lead, tying the game at 3-3 early in the final frame.
The Caps appeared to retake the lead when John Carlson set up Dylan Strome for a drive-by deflection goal, but Tampa Bay issued a successful coach’s challenge to take the goal off the board, correctly alleging that the Caps were offside on the play.
“I know we’ve probably talked about it a lot, staying calm and doing the right things,” says Carlson. “But when those pucks went in, it felt like nothing wavered. I think we were happy with how we played the whole game. You’re going to make mistakes, and they capitalized on some of them, just like we did. I was happy to see us right back on the ice and refocused.”
With the game still even at 3-3, the Caps killed off a third Tampa Bay power play, and then they lost Oshie for the evening. After failing to retake the lead on a power play of their own, the Caps jumped back on top with their third goal off the forecheck on the night, a Rasmus Sandin strike from the slot with 4:59 left, expertly set up by Aliaksei Protas.
“Our forecheck got us a lot of the chances tonight, a lot of the [offensive] zone time, a lot of the looks and goals,” says Carlson. “When a good team starts coming at us like they were, it’s easy to just sag back and make sure we’re not making any big mistakes. And like we saw [on Tuesday vs. New Jersey] in the third period, we did a better job of attacking the game, attacking with the lead.”
They’ve also attacked early. In each of their three straight victories, the Caps have scored the game’s first goal within four minutes of opening puck drop, and they’ve never trailed at any point in the three contests.
“You can just look at the chances for and against,” says Strome. “When you have the lead, you’re getting way more chances for. The other team is going to push a little harder, and it completely changes the game. When you have the lead, the other team’s [defensemen] are pinching, the other team is trying to make extra plays on the rush, and then we can counter-attack.
“You can see why a one-goal lead turns into a two- or three-goal lead pretty quickly. I thought we did a good job of that [Thursday]. Obviously, we stayed composed when they got two quick ones there in the third, and then obviously we had the offside goal, and we came back and got another one. We had a solid game, and we didn’t get deterred from those little moments.”
Florida comes into Saturday’s game on the heels of a 1-0 loss to the Hurricanes in Raleigh on Thursday night. That setback by the slimmest of margins came in excruciating fashion; Carolina’s Sebastian Aho netted the only goal of the game at 19:41 of the third period to end Florida’s remarkable run of 11 straight road victories, one shy of matching the NHL record, jointly held by the 2005-06 Detroit Red Wings and the 2014-15 Minnesota Wild.
The Panthers were blanked despite 44 shots against Carolina netminder Pyotr Kochetkov, who set a Hartford/Carolina franchise record for most saves in a shutout by a rookie goaltender.
Thursday’s loss to the Hurricanes also halted the Panthers’ winning streak at six. Florida comes into Saturday’s game with a 10-2-0 mark in its last dozen games.
