Feb. 11 vs. Vancouver Canucks at Capital One Arena
Time: 1:30 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Stream: MonSports.net/Stream
Radio: 106.7 The Fan, Capitals Radio 24/7
Vancouver Canucks (34-12-5)
Washington Capitals (23-20-7)
The Caps finish up a set of weekend back-to-backs on Sunday afternoon when they return home to host the Vancouver Canucks. Sunday’s game marks the 16th consecutive Super Bowl Sunday matinee match for the Caps at Capital One Arena, and the 34th time they’ve hosted a home game on the afternoon of the NFL’s annual championship contest.
On Saturday afternoon in Boston, the Caps turned in their best overall 60-minute performance on the season to date, and the result was a stifling 3-0 shutout of the Bruins at TD Garden. Saturday’s victory dropped the B’s to 51-10-6 at home over the last two seasons, and the Caps are the only team in the League that has administered as many as two of those 10 regulation defeats in the Beantown barn.
Charlie Lindgren stopped all 18 shots he faced to record his third shutout of the season, and he was supported offensively with goals from T.J. Oshie on the power play, Dylan Strome, and Alex Ovechkin, who scored into an empty net in the game’s final minute, his fourth straight game with a goal. Lindgren was also supported defensively by all 18 white-sweatered skaters, and a stout effort from Washington’s penalty killing outfit, which successfully snuffed out all four Boston man advantages.
“Sometimes those low-shot games can be challenging,” said Lindgren after the satisfying shutout victory. “As a goalie, it was so much fun to watch the guys in front of me work tonight. This win tonight and this shutout, all the credit in the world goes to the guys in front of me. I thought the effort – right from the drop of the puck, start to finish – was incredible.”
It was indeed, and it came at a most opportune time. Saturday’s game against Boston was the front half of a rugged set of weekend back-to-backs with just 22 hours worth of turnaround between puck drops, the shortest time allowable between back-to-back contests. Saturday’s victory also came in the back half of the two-game Mentors’ Trip; Washington has never come home empty-handed from a two-game Mentors’ Trip since the first one in 2008, and that’s still the case, as the 14th iteration of that splendid event comes to a close.
“If we play that way, we’re a playoff hockey team; there’s no doubt about it,” Lindgren continues. “So again, so much fun to watch, and obviously amazing having our mentors here tonight, too. They mean the world to us, so it was a fun game.”
“It’s obviously huge,” echoes Caps’ winger Beck Malenstyn. “We’d love to get a win in front of them, and I’m sure they enjoyed that.”
Most importantly though, the win ended Washington’s six-game skid (0-5-1) as the Caps desperately vie to pull their season out of the fire, and to muster a late season surge to a berth in the Stanley Cup playoffs, despite probably the most difficult schedule of any team in the League the rest of the way.
“We’ve been putting a lot of focus on our game right now, trying to figure out what’s off a little bit,” says Malenstyn. “And I thought today was just a great day of us putting that all together, and I think it showed out there.”
Throughout much of Washington’s six-game slide, it struggled with its starts, it fell behind early – often by multiple goals – and was forced to play catch-up hockey, it had difficulty keeping pucks out of its own net, and in getting pucks cleanly out of its own end of the ice. Each of those issues was aptly remedied in Saturday’s triumph, and now the trick is to carry those qualities forward against yet another formidable foe on Sunday, on home ice.
“The breakout component of us being able to exit the zone and nullify their forecheck pressure,” begins Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery, “now we’re controlling play, now we’re constantly – and early in shifts – getting the puck and exiting, and now we can spend a shift on the attack, as opposed to the opposite, where you fail a breakout, and now you spend your shift in the [defensive] zone, now you come change, and now that line starts in the [defensive] zone.
“So we did a really good job. Communication was great, all the different components that we talked about [at Friday’s practice], the breakouts were real clean tonight.”
Sunday’s meeting with the Canucks is the first of two meetings between the two teams this season; the Caps visit Vancouver in the midst of a five-game road trip through Western Canada and Seattle in mid-March.
The Canucks are currently in the midst of a five-game road trip of their own, with just one more stop in Chicago on Tuesday after Sunday’s game in Washington. Vancouver is 1-1-1 on the trip to date; it opened the journey with a one-goal win in Carolina this past Tuesday, it was blanked at the hands of the Bruins in Boston on Thursday, and it came out on the short end of a 4-3 overtime decision in Detroit on Saturday.
In Saturday’s setback to the Wings, Vancouver carried a 3-1 lead into the third, only to lose hold of that advantage on two Detroit goals in the front half of the third period. Red Wings defenseman Jake Walman won it for the Wings on a penalty shot in the extra session, the first penalty shot goal in overtime in Red Wings franchise history. Walman became the fourth defenseman ever to score an overtime game-winner, joining Frantisek Kaberle, Andy Greene and Ben Hutton on that short and surprising list.
