Dec. 29 vs. New York Islanders at UBS Arena
Time: 7:30 p.m.
TV: MNMT2
Stream: MonSports.net/Stream
Radio: 106.7 The Fan, Capitals Radio 24/7
Washington Capitals (17-10-5)
New York Islanders (16-9-9)
On Friday night, the Caps will finish up a two-game tour of the New York metropolitan region when they take on the Islanders at UBS Arena. Friday’s game concludes the season’s series between the two Metropolitan Division rivals, and it pits a pair of teams coming off lopsided losses on Wednesday, in each team’s first game back in action following the NHL’s holiday hiatus.
While the Caps were dropping a 5-1 decision to the Rangers in Manhattan on Wednesday, the Islanders were on the business end of a home ice shellacking, losing 7-0 at the hands of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Both the Caps and the Isles conducted Thursday practice sessions aimed at curing their respective ills.
For Washington, it’s the same old story. Thirty-two games into the 2023-24 season, the Caps are still subsisting on the most meager of offensive attacks. With an average of just 2.34 goals per game, the Caps rank 31st in the NHL in offense, their lowest single-season output since the dismal 2003-04 season when they averaged 2.27 goals per game, which was good for 27th in what was a 30-team circuit at the time.
The Caps have managed to accrue 39 standings points, doing so largely on the strength of their goaltending, their defense and their penalty killing. Offensively, they’ve had a few strong games where they appear to be on the verge of breaking loose, but regression always seems to follow. In a sequence of three games in four nights from Dec. 7-10, Washington rolled up a dozen goals in those three games, scoring 11 of them at even strength and going 2-0-1 in the process.
But in the seven games since, the Caps have combined to score just 13 goals, with just eight of them coming at even strength. Washington is 3-2-2 in those seven games. In their last three games, the Caps have scored five goals; four of them have come off the stick of Anthony Mantha, who has all three of Washington’s even-strength markers over that span.
Mantha got the Caps on the board first in Wednesday’s loss to the Rangers, scoring his fourth goal in three games to stake Washington to a 1-0 lead early in the second period. But New York netted the game’s next five goals, scoring thrice in the second and twice in the third to win going away.
“I don’t think that’s been any different,” assessed Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery in the aftermath of the loss. “Have we found ways to win 2-1, and get a goal from our power play in overtime? For sure we have. And we’ve won a few shootouts for sure, and we deserve a lot of credit for that. But at the end of the day, we have to start scoring at 5-on-5 if we’re going to be a quality team in this League.
“We can defend, we check, we’re detailed, we’re organized. But you’ve got to score and you’ve got to be able to find scoring, and we just don’t have that right now. So [Dylan] Strome’s line at 5-on-5, [Alex Ovechkin], the back end. We just need some 5-on-5 production. We just haven’t got that yet this year, and we’ll continue to work on it. We’ll continue to find answers, we’ll continue to dig under every rock, lift up every rock to find different ways to capitalize, and produce, and create offense.”
Mantha and linemates Connor McMichael and Aliaksei Protas have combined to give the Caps a reliable and consistent line for a good chunk of the season now. The ostensible fourth line of Beck Malenstyn, Nic Dowd and Nicolas Aube-Kubel has proven to be a reliable checking line, capable of shutting down top opponents while chipping in with some occasional offense as well. But much of the rest of the lineup has underachieved offensively, and Carbery and his staff have tried various combinations without finding any real spark or chemistry.
With the Caps trailing 3-1 at the outset of the third period of Wednesday’s game, Carbery put Ovechkin with Evgeny Kuznetsov and rookie Ivan Miroshnichenko in an effort to generate some offense. The trio did create some chances and looks, but no goals.
“It was okay,” says Carbery. “They created two or three good looks – Miro has a couple of good looks – and they give up the one goal, chasing the game a little bit, so it’s hard to evaluate. But they had a couple of good chances, it’s just what they gave up.”
At Thursday’s practice, Carbery switched up three of his four lines, leaving only the Dowd line intact. McMichael moves to the middle of a line with Ovechkin and Tom Wilson, and Strome centers for Mantha and Protas. The other line consisted of Evgeny Kuznetsov centering for Max Pacioretty and Matthew Phillips, though Carbery also conceded that Pacioretty may or may not play on Friday; either way, he is nearing a return from a torn Achilles’ that has sidelined him for the better part of a year now.
Kuznetsov had been skating between rookies Hendrix Lapierre and Ivan Miroshnichenko, both of whom could be on the bubble with the impending return of Pacioretty and blueliner Ethan Bear from long term injury rehab. Bear officially signed a two-year deal with Washington on Thursday afternoon, a deal that carries an average annual value of $2.0625 million.
The six Metropolitan Division teams in slots two through seven in the divisional standings are separated by only five points, heading into Thursday night’s slate of NHL activity. The Islanders are leading that pack, occupying second place in the Metro. But with 41 points, the Isles are closer to seventh-place Pittsburgh (36) than they are to the frontrunning Rangers (49).
As ugly as Wednesday’s loss was for the Islanders – they yielded six goals in the second period – it was just their second regulation loss in the month of December, and they’ve collected points in 11 of their last 13 games (8-2-3) overall, a streak that stretches back to the final day of November.
“I just felt like we weren’t jumping to people,” says Isles’ coach Lane Lambert of Wednesday’s game. “A lot of watching, for whatever reason. It sort of takes me back a little bit to the beginning of the year when we were having some issues in our own zone. Just not focused and not dialed in, and a lot of duplication, which led to players being open.
“it wasn’t good, we all know that. We’ve got to correct it, and fix it, and move forward.”
The Caps and Islanders split the two games played in the District this season, with Washington’s win coming in overtime. The Caps defeated the Isles here last month, taking a 4-1 win behind a pair of Ovechkin goals and a 36-save effort from Hunter Shepard in the Washington nets.
