Jan. 13 vs. New York Rangers at Capital One Arena
Time: 1:00 p.m.
TV: ABC, ESPN+
Radio: 106.7 The Fan, Capitals Radio 24/7
New York Rangers (26-12-2)
Washington Capitals (19-14-6)
Washington concludes its five-game homestand on Saturday afternoon against the Rangers at Capital One Arena. Saturday’s game is the front end of a set of home-and-home back-to-backs with the Rangers; immediately after the homestand finale, the Caps will board a train to Manhattan for Sunday’s game at Madison Square Garden, the final game between the Capitals and the Rangers this season.
The current homestand hasn’t gone as the Caps would have hoped. They enter Saturday’s game with one win in the first four games, and they start the day in seventh place in the Metropolitan Division standings. They’re now three points off the pace of the team – Tampa Bay, going into Friday’s NHL action – currently occupying the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference standings. The Caps must claw their way past four teams to get themselves into that spot.
In the midst of what is likely to be a season-defining stretch of its schedule, Washington hasn’t been able to string together consecutive victories in just over three weeks, its longest dry spell of the season in that regard. These two games against the Rangers this weekend are the last games the Caps will play against a Metropolitan Division foe for more than a month, until a Feb. 20 home date with New Jersey.
Nineteen of Washington’s 26 games against fellow Metro denizens fall in the first half of the season; the Caps will reach the midpoint of the campaign on Sunday in New York. The Caps will have the fewest second-half games against divisional foes of any of the NHL’s 32 teams.
Most recently, the Caps fell 4-1 on Thursday night to the white-hot Seattle Kraken, who have now won eight straight and have claimed points in a dozen straight games (10-0-2). The Caps couldn’t cash in on any of a handful of early scoring chances in the game, and by the time Max Pacioretty scored Washington’s lone goal of the game – his first goal in just over a year and his first as a Capital – in the sixth minute of the second, it merely halved what was a 2-0 Seattle lead.
Over the life of Seattle’s eight-game winning streak, the team has trailed on the scoreboard for a combined total of just 38:22, easily the least time trailing in the NHL over that span. Getting on the board early and scoring first might have helped the Caps in their bid to quell the Kraken, but it didn’t happen.
“I didn’t hate the way we came out and played; we definitely had our chances,” said Pacioretty afterwards. “We know that’s the hottest team in the League and the goalie is feeling really good about himself. Obviously after one, you feel like you’d get a few good looks there, but yeah, we’ve got to work harder and embrace that every night is going to be a grind. And it takes dirty goals to win hockey games.”
Dirty goals or any goals would be welcome for Washington at this point. With an average of 2.36 goals per game this season, the Caps rank 30th in the League. The last time the Caps finished a full season with less of a scoring presence was in the fire sale season of 2003-04, when they averaged 2.27 goals per game, finishing 27th in what was a 30-team circuit in those days. Thursday’s loss to the Kraken marked the 13th time this season the Caps have been limited to one or no goals in a game; that’s one-third of their games thus far in 2023-24.
Right wing Tom Wilson missed Thursday’s game after suffering a broken nose in the third period of Washington’s previous game, a 4-3 win over Los Angeles on Sunday. Wilson returned to the ice for Friday’s practice session, and he seems likely to return to the lineup on Saturday against the Rangers.
“I took a pretty good jolt, and it was a tough couple of days,” says Wilson. “I woke up [Thursday] just not feeling very well, and I feel better today. [Thursday] I just took a step back and reevaluated. Obviously, it was a long couple of days, there was a lot of trauma. It was tough not being out there, but I’ve just got to make sure to do the right thing.”
With Wilson missing Thursday’s game, the Caps are now down to just five players who have suited up and played in each of the team’s first 39 games this season: John Carlson, Nick Jensen, Beck Malenstyn, Alex Ovechkin and Dylan Strome.
Carlson and Ovechkin both took maintenance days on Friday. Carlson is likely to play on Saturday, but Ovechkin has been a game-time decision for each of Washington’s last two games, and he is likely to be for Saturday’s game as well.
New York roared out to a swift start this season and forged itself a comfortable lead in the Metropolitan Division standings. But going into Friday’s NHL activity, the Rangers’ cushion over second-place Carolina is down to just three points, though New York holds a game in hand.
Since putting a 5-1 hurting on the Capitals in New York on Dec. 27 in the first game following the NHL’s holiday break, the Rangers are 2-4-1 and they’ve yielded 26 goals against in those seven contests. In 13 of its 14 losses this season, New York has yielded four or more goals against.
Most recently, the Blueshirts suffered a 5-2 setback to the Blues on Thursday night in St. Louis. The Rangers outshot the Blues 42-20 in Thursday’s game, but led for only a couple of minutes early in the first. New York has now fired 40-plus shots on net in each of its last three games, the first time it has achieved that feat in 16 years (Jan. 10-14, 2008).
