Oct. 21 vs. Montreal Canadiens at Bell Centre
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 The Fan, Capitals Radio 24/7
Washington Capitals (1-2-0)
Montreal Canadiens (1-1-1)
The Caps conclude their first road trip of the season – a two-game journey to eastern Canada – on Saturday night in Montreal against the Canadiens. Washington opened the trip with a 6-1 loss to the Senators in Ottawa on Wednesday.
Three games into the young 2023-24 season, goaltending has been the best part of Washington’s overall game. Darcy Kuemper stole the Caps’ lone win of the season, stopping 38 of 40 shots against Calgary on Monday in a 3-2 shootout victory, and he and Charlie Lindgren – who is currently sidelined with an upper body injury – have both played well to date.
As for the rest of the squad, there have been some struggles in the season’s first week. It’s not the record (1-2-0) that is cause for concern, it’s the way the Caps look on the ice through the first 185 minutes of play this season that doesn’t look right. Washington has scored just three goals in three games while yielding a dozen against. Analytically, the Caps have controlled just 43.2 percent of even strength shot attempts, ranking 28th in the circuit. They rank 31st in even-strength shots on net at 39.9 percent.
Washington has yet to score the game’s first goal, and it has fallen down by multiple goals in each of its three games. The Caps are still seeking their first power-play goal of the season (0-for-8), they’ve gotten just one goal from their top six group of forwards, and they’re still seeking to crack the 30-shot plateau for the first time this season.
A three-game sample size isn’t much, and if these three games were to occur later in the season, the struggles wouldn’t be as noticeable as a small portion of a much larger body of work. But that’s not the case, and the Caps are seeking to shore up virtually every aspect of their game as they prepare to take on the Canadiens in a Hockey Night in Canada tilt.
“It’s concerning for sure,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery of his team’s sluggish start. “We felt like in preseason and training camp, we put ourselves in a good spot and we’re healthy for the most part. And to not get off to the start that we had anticipated is frustrating and concerning. I know our guys aren’t happy with it, our staff isn’t happy with it, and we’re looking for solutions and ways to correct it.”
At Friday’s practice in Montreal, Carbery tweaked his forward lines a bit, moving Matthew Phillips up to the right side of a line with Alex Ovechkin and Dylan Strome. T.J. Oshie mans the right side of a unit with Connor McMichael and Evgeny Kuznetsov, and Tom Wilson skates the right side of a line with Sonny Milano and Nicklas Backstrom.
Center Nic Dowd (upper body) missed Wednesday’s game in Ottawa and did not practice with the team on Friday, so Washington’s fourth line remains as it looked on Wednesday: Beck Malenstyn on the left and Anthony Mantha on the right side of pivot Aliaksei Protas.
“We shook it up a little bit,” says Carbery. “I liked some of the things that happened with line combinations and chemistry in Ottawa, but felt like moving Matty up there with Stromer and [Ovechkin] may be able to give us a little bit of pace on that wing, so we’ll give that a look.”
For the first time in his 19-season NHL career, Ovechkin has gone consecutive games without putting a shot on net, though he did pick up on an assist on John Carlson’s goal in Ottawa on Wednesday. In 14 minutes and 52 seconds worth of power play time this season, Ovechkin has had a couple of good looks at the net, but no shots on goal as of yet. He has had four shot tries blocked on the power play and has missed the mark on four occasions as well.
“Find a way to score goals,” says Ovechkin, asked what he himself needs to do better. “Obviously we struggle right now a little bit, but it’s up to us. We know the system, the players have to create, especially in the offensive zone and through the neutral zone.”
The Caps also need to generate more and better scoring chances. With just 18 high danger scoring chances in three games, Washington ranks last in the League in that category, according to naturalstattrick.com.
“No, not really, obviously,” says Ovechkin when asked if his scoring chances are where he’d like them to be. “If I was to say how I play, I’m unhappy with my game. And you can see overall as a team, yeah, sometimes we play good. But most of the time, it’s kind of a battle out there.”
“We’ve got to keep working at it,” said Carbery in the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s loss in Ottawa. “We’ve got to stay upbeat, and we’ve got to get some guys going here. We’ve got to get some guys going. We’re three games into the year, and it’s still very, very early, but we have to get our group going individually, which will help give us some line chemistry, it will help us generate some momentum in games, it will help us be able to deploy a line that we know is going to be able to be reliable in this situation, and to be able to do this. And right now, we don’t have that.
“We have to play tighter. Until we find our groove offensively and can make a play like you saw on the other side of the ice tonight, until we get to that spot, we have to tighten up.”
In an effort to “tighten up” play in their own end of the ice, the Caps have recalled defenseman Hardy Haman Aktell from AHL Hershey. After a strong training camp with the Caps, Haman Aktell was one of Washington’s final roster cuts. His stay in Hershey was short; he played two games there, scoring one goal. Now, he is poised to make his NHL debut here on Saturday night.
“It’s crazy,” he says, of being on the cusp of his NHL debut. “It’s super fun and exciting. I’m at a loss for words, almost.”
Montreal has been idle since Tuesday, when it fell 5-2 to Minnesota at Bell Centre. Saturday’s game concludes a three-game homestand for the Habs, whose lone win thus far was a 3-2 triumph over Chicago in the opener of that homestand here last Saturday night.
The Habs head to Buffalo for a Monday night date with the Sabres after this one, and then the Canadiens will be right back here for the rest of the week and another three-game homestand.
