Caps Get First Look at Pens
As season nears one-month mark, Caps play host to a Metro foe for first time
The Caps move to the backside of their season-long four-game homestand on Wednesday night when the Pittsburgh Penguins make the first of their two visits to the District this season. Wednesday's game is the Capitals' first home game against a Metropolitan Division opponent this season.
Washington halted a four-game losing streak (0-2-2) on Monday night with an uplifting 5-4 win over the Edmonton Oilers, a game packed with pace and entertainment from start to finish. In each of their four consecutive losses, the Caps held a lead past the midpoint of the middle period, but they weren't able to close any of them out with a two-point result.
In Monday's win over the Oilers, the Caps grabbed a 2-0 lead on a pair of Dylan Strome goals, then kept the offensively dangerous Oilers at arm's length for the rest of the net. Edmonton cut into every two-goal lead Washington built, but thanks to some clutch netminding from Charlie Lindgren, the Oilers were never able to muster the tying tally, and they were never quite able to seize and hold onto momentum for very long.
Lindgren has helped the Caps to points in three of his four starts (2-1-1), despite facing some potent and prolific offensive teams in each of his four starts. He entered Monday's game seeing an average of 37 shots a game, and he made 25 saves in the victory over the Oilers.
"Certainly, I've seen some pretty good teams so far," says Lindgren. "I feel like right now I'm playing with a lot of confidence. I feel like that helps; I feel like every time I get in the cage I'm feeling really good about my game. I don't like letting in four [goals], but at the end of the day I felt good about my game, and I look forward to the next one."
The Caps were 4-for-5 on the power play, tied for the fourth-most extra man tallies in a single game in franchise history. Washington was economical and it worked with precision on the power play in Monday's game, scoring the four goals on just five shots and needing only 4:29 worth of power play time with which to score those goals.
"We just found a way to get pucks to the net, and they went in tonight," says Strome, who scored the Caps' only even-strength goal and the first of its power-play goals. "We did a good of job of screening the goalie, and we had some great chances. And when you get a 5-on-3 you want to capitalize on it, so we'll take the win."
Strome was one of only four Caps to collect a point in Monday's game, and all four players had multi-point nights.
Evgeny Kuznetsov broke out with his first two goals of the season and added a pair of assists, picking up all four points on the power play to tie a franchise record for most power-play points in a game. Kuznetsov is the 11th player in franchise history to record four power-play points in a single game, but the first in more than a decade, since Dennis Wideman had four in a 4-2 win over the Maple Leafs here on Dec. 9, 2011.
Alex Ovechkin had a goal and an assist for the 399th multi-point game of his NHL career. Among active players in the NHL, only Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby (425) has more. Ovechkin also scored against Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner for the first time in his career, marking the third straight game in which he has scored against a new victim. Ovechkin has had seven such streaks in his NHL career, but this was his first three-game run scoring against first-time victims since Nov. 24-28, a span of nearly 14 years. The Caps' captain has now scored against 163 different NHL netminders in his 18-year career; only Jaromir Jagr (178), Patrick Marleau (177) and Mark Messier (164) scored against more netminders.
Washington played Monday's game without the services of stalwart defensemen John Carlson and Dmitry Orlov, both of whom were out with lower body injuries, marking only the third time in the Capitals' last 927 regular season games that both of those blueliners were unavailable to them. Into that breach stepped Erik Gustafsson, who notched the fourth three-assist game of his career - and his first since April 1, 2019 - all while leading all Caps defensemen in ice time with 24:33, the most he has skated in a game since Dec. 18, 2019 (25:10 with Chicago vs. Colorado).
"I think we had a solid game," says Gustafsson. "We had good sticks. There were a couple of times where I had bad judgement in going for the puck instead of just staying in front of the net when they scored a goal, but I think we handled it pretty well, better than the last couple of games here. But Edmonton is a great team with great players. But we stick together, and this was a big win for us."
It'll be an even bigger win if the Caps can start stacking them up. They're hopeful of getting their defense healthier; both Carlson and Orlov participated fully in an optional practice on Tuesday. Washington is now 4-2-1 on home ice this season, with two games remaining on the homestand, against Pittsburgh and then Tampa Bay on Friday. On Wednesday, they'll be facing a Penguins team that has taken an abrupt southerly turn following an impressive 4-0-1 start to the season.
After picking up points in each of their first five games this season, the Pens have dropped seven straight games (0-6-1), their longest slide in 16 years. Pittsburgh has been outscored by a combined total of 33-16 in those seven games, and like Washington, the Pens have struggled to score at 5-on-5 of late, but they've also been bleeding goals against at even strength. Over the life of their seven-game slide, they've yielded 21 goals at 5-on-5, the most in the NHL over that span. Pittsburgh has been outscored 21-11 at 5-on-5 in its last seven games.
Most recently, the Pens dropped a 3-2 home ice decision to the Seattle Kraken on Saturday night. Pittsburgh has been idle since, and with that extended breather, the Pens are in the process of getting healthier. Penalty killing ace Teddy Blueger and veteran center Jeff Carter are both nearing a return, and the Pens have struggled while down a man in Blueger's absence. Going into Tuesday night's slate of NHL activity, Pittsburgh ranked 26th in the circuit with a 73.2% penalty-killing success rate.
