Caps Face San Jose on Saturday

November 20 vs. San Jose Sharks at SAP Center
Time: 10:30 p.m.
TV:NBCSW
Radio:Capitals Radio 24/7, 106.7 FAN
Washington Capitals (10-2-5)
San Jose Sharks (8-7-1)

Washington moves into the back half of a four-game West Coast road swing on Saturday night when it takes on the Sharks in San Jose. The game is the front end of a set of back-to-back games; the Caps will head north to Seattle where they'll conclude the trip on Sunday night against the expansion Kraken.
A week and a day ago in Detroit, the Caps embarked upon a rather daunting span of schedule in which they play seven games in seven cities over 11 nights, with three sets of back-to-backs on the road. Every team deals with patches such as this one over the course of an 82-game grind, but with a growing number of key players missing from the lineup - and players joining the list of the ailing by the week - this hardly seemed like an optimal time for such a stretch. But five games into that daunting patch of scheduling, they've managed to pull nine of a possible 10 points under trying circumstances.
Already missing centers Nicklas Backstrom and Nic Dowd and wingers T.J. Oshie and Anthony Mantha, the Caps opened the seven-game stretch by sweeping back-to-backs in Detroit and Columbus, respectively, late last week. They returned home for an off day last Saturday and laid a 6-1 trouncing on Pittsburgh Sunday night in D.C. before departing for the coast on Monday.
The lone blemish on the Caps' record during this stretch came on Tuesday in Anaheim, when they dropped a 3-2 overtime decision to the Ducks. But that point was a good one for the Caps to grab, as they had to come back from a one-goal deficit twice in the game's final 20 minutes to force the extra session and gain the point. A night later in Los Angeles, the Caps blanked the Kings 2-0 on the strength of a 34-save effort in net from Ilya Samsonov and a pair of late third-period goals from Garnet Hathaway.
After Wednesday's win in Los Angeles, the Caps enjoyed a relaxing and recharging off day in Southern California on Thursday before heading north along the West Coast for weekend dates in San Jose and Seattle, and the merciful end of that 11-day grind.
"You just keep going," says Caps right wing Tom Wilson. "You wake up every day and you just focus on that day and you focus on that game and trying to get a win. When you're in the grind and when you're in the battle, that's what I was so proud of. Guys just kept going and kept giving more and more, and it was pretty cool to see."

Inside of that 11-day stretch, the Caps just concluded a run of five games in five different cities/venues in a span of seven nights. This marks just the eighth time in franchise history that Washington has endured such a grueling stretch, and the first time in more than 28 years (from Oct. 24-30, 1993). Each of the first five such occurrences came in the Caps' first five seasons of existence.
"That's a tough stretch of games there, especially having only one day between [the Pittsburgh game] and coming to California," says Caps defenseman Justin Schultz. "That's not easy, and then playing back-to-back right away. Guys really battled hard and battled through it. There's no excuses in here."
Now they'll seek to power their way through one more set of back-to-backs this weekend before they head back to the District for Thanksgiving week. Once they get through the weekend, the Caps' schedule will thin out slightly, too. They won't face another back-to-back situation until Dec. 10-11.
Seventeen games into the season, the Caps have already accumulated a total of 44 man-games lost to injury. But they've only amassed two regulation losses thus far, tied with Carolina and Florida for the fewest in the NHL.
"We're not out of the out of the woods," says Wilson. "It's early on in the year. We're playing well, but there's a lot of hockey left. We've got to learn from that and how we played in those tough games in those tough circumstances, and you can lean on that down the road when the hockey gets a little tougher."

The Sharks have been in the NHL for three decades now, and for the better part of that timespan, the Shark Tank was a house of horrors for the Capitals. A few paragraphs above where you're reading right now, we alluded to the last time Washington played five games in five cities in a span of seven nights, noting the end date of that stretch was Oct. 30, 1993. That game was played here in San Jose, and the Caps won it by a 4-2 count. It was their third win in as many trips out this way at the time, coming early in the Sharks' third season in the NHL.
But thereafter, the Caps went cold for a couple decades plus in San Jose. It wasn't until March 22, 2014 that Washington earned its next win in Northern California, finally halting an 0-10-1 slide in San Jose. They've fared much better since, going 5-2-0 in their last seven visits and winning each of their last three trips into town.
San Jose opens a four-game homestand on Saturday against the Caps. The Sharks are back home after a five-game road trip in which they went 2-3-0. That journey concluded with a 4-1 loss to the Blues in St. Louis on Thursday.
The Sharks advanced to the Western Conference Final Series in 2019, but have missed the playoffs in consecutive seasons since, doing so for the first time since 1995-97.