Caps Get Ready for Matinee vs. Flames
Caps prepare for a Saturday matinee against an unfamiliar foe, sandwiched between a pair of one-game road trips
Two days after a triumphant one-game journey to Newark, the Caps stop home to host the Calgary Flames in a Saturday afternoon matinee match at Capital One Arena.
Saturday's contest against Calgary is a single home game tucked between two one-game road journeys, and it's an afternoon game to boot. It also follows a hard-fought divisional contest against the Devils on Thursday, a 4-1 Caps victory in their first road game of '21-22.
Washington did not conduct a morning skate prior to the game in New Jersey, and it held a well-attended optional practice on Friday. Because Thursday's game in New Jersey was such a speedy affair, the Caps were able to get on the ground at Dulles before midnight, a rarity and a nice little bonus that afforded the players a bit of extra rest time.
"It was a tough call," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette of making Friday's skate optional. "Usually there is a pregame skate, but it's a 1 o'clock game coming in after a night game. It was whatever is going to make you a great player [Saturday]. And so 20 or 30 minutes out here just moving around, otherwise they had to go into the gym. There was something today, it was just whether or not they put their gear on."
Now the challenge for the Caps is to get themselves ready to play an afternoon game against a Western Conference foe they haven't faced in nearly two full years, since Nov. 3, 2019, the night of the Washington Nationals' memorable post-World Series bacchanal, one of the most memorable regular season games here in recent years. The Caps prevailed in that game by a 4-2 score, not long after taking a 5-3 decision from the Flames in Calgary on Oct. 22 of that year.
Peter Laviolette | October 22
Laviolette has coached in the NHL for two decades now, and he has a good finger on the pulse of his team, knowing when to push and when to ease up, and also knowing he has a team that is older but also experienced enough to know how get itself ready to go, both individually and collectively.
"I think in a situation where we played [Thursday] night away and we have a one o'clock home game [Saturday], it's a little bit better for me personally," says Caps center Evgeny Kuznetsov. "But still, those afternoon games you cannot expect - and we cannot predict - how you're going to feel in the morning.
"Sometimes our body is just built for that; you have a morning skate and you go through the process, but there is no excuses - we have to be sharp. We have to start building our standard, and if we raise the standard we have to be always there, and we have to perform the way we performed before, here or there."
The Caps played a dozen matinee matches in the 56-game regular season in 2020-21, going 6-4-2 in those games. Playing an afternoon game on Saturday following a Thursday night road game is not terribly dissimilar to playing back-to-backs with travel. You're playing two 60-minute hockey games within a span of roughly 44 hours.
"We have a great leadership group that has been in the League for a long time," says Caps right wing Garnet Hathaway. "And Lavi has an open line of communication; he talks to those guys and he says, 'Hey, what's best for you?' And he has a line that he says, 'Do what you need to do that will make you the best player when game time comes. Doesn't matter what it is, what option it is, but if you're at your best, do that.'
"In New Jersey, I think they had a conversation about it. We had a good practice here [Wednesday], and then we flew out. It's all unique. The Prudential Center is a little far away from the hotel, and it's not like we didn't do anything [on game day morning]. We stretched and we had a team meeting. We did a lot of stuff that morning that allowed us to play a high caliber game that night."
Although the idea behind not having a morning skate in Newark was somewhat circumstantial, as Hathaway notes, it may also serve to help the Caps, who also won't have the benefit of a morning skate ahead of Saturday's afternoon contest, even if they wanted to do so.
"I didn't even think about that," says Hathaway, of the rarity of two straight games without a morning skate. "You know, that's definitely something they thought about, too. I knew I was going to skate [Friday] regardless, because I knew we wouldn't have one on Saturday. I guess in that sense, it's going to be a different morning.
"We talked about it, how behind the scenes you're going to eat your eggs and then go play a game and battle with a guy in the corner. How do you get ready for that? It's nice that we have a veteran team that any guy can lean on to ask questions: 'Hey, what works for you?' You can try stuff out, and when that 1 o'clock game starts, did you do everything in the morning that helps you best prepare for the game?"
Little more than 12 hours after returning from Newark, the Caps were just scratching the surface of their pre-scouting process on the Flames on Friday afternoon.
"We just started getting into it today because of the game [Thursday]," says Laviolette. "We've got to get ready to compete. It's a battle-driven team, and different teams offer different challenges. You play a team like New Jersey, it's young and it's fast and it moves up and down the ice. I've got a feeling this one is going to be a little more [about] the battles for the puck and the possession."
Aside from losing longtime defense anchor and team captain Mark Giordano to Seattle in the expansion draft, the Flames' offseason additions and subtractions were mostly around the fringes of the roster. They added versatile forward Blake Coleman after he played on two Cup-winning clubs in Tampa Bay the last two seasons, and they also added bottom six forward Tyler Pitlick and hulking defenseman Nikita Zadorov.
Calgary opened its season with two games at home, falling 5-2 to Edmonton in its opener a week ago and taking a 3-2 overtime loss against Anaheim two nights later. The Flames then set out on their current five-game road journey, blanking the Red Wings 3-0 in Detroit on Thursday night in the trip opener.
After Saturday's game in Washington, the Flames will face the Rangers, Devils and Penguins, respectively, before returning to Alberta for a five-game homestand at the Saddledome.
