October 31 vs. Montreal Canadiens at Capital One Arena
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 The Fan, Caps Radio 24/7
Montreal Canadiens (4-5-1)
Washington Capitals (6-2-0)
The Caps close out October with a Halloween night home game on Thursday. The Montreal Canadiens come to town to supply the opposition for the middle match of Washington’s three-game homestand.
In Tuesday’s homestand opener – a compelling and entertaining contest from opening puck drop to final horn – the Capitals bested the New York Rangers 5-3, their fourth straight home ice triumph, a modest distinction they never managed to achieve in either of the previous two seasons. Alex Ovechkin opened the scoring with a pair of goals less than two minutes apart, helping the Caps to a a three-goal first period against the Rangers, who hadn’t allowed as many as three goals in six of their eight previous games this season.
Washington’s three-goal first period outburst is the fifth such period in eight games this season; it’s one of nine multi-goal periods the Caps have managed in the first eight games. Last season, the Caps’ fifth three-goal period came on Nov. 30, 2023, in the 20th game of the campaign. In 2023-24, the team’s ninth multi-goal period came on Nov. 10, in its 12th game.
Washington’s humble four-game home winning streak is its longest in nearly three years, since winning four straight games from Nov. 8-26, 2021.
Tuesday’s triumph was satisfying on many levels. It came against the team that bumped the Caps from the 2024 Stanley Cup playoffs six months earlier, and that team is also a Metro Division rival ahead of Washington in the standings. But maybe most importantly in what promises to be a highly competitive chase for playoff berths in the Eastern Conference this season, Tuesday’s win followed a loss to the Lightning in Tampa on Saturday.
The name of the game at this level is to keep losing streaks from festering. Despite facing yet another heavyweight opponent, the Caps made sure they got back into the win column.
“Every game is hard in this league,” says Caps’ forward Aliaksei Protas, who had a three-point game – including the game-winning goal – in Tuesday’s win over the Rangers. “You have to be on your best every night if you want to win. I think we played good in Tampa and it just didn’t go our way, like [scoring] chances. [Tuesday’s win] was a very good bounce back game for us, and we have to keep it rolling at home, especially, and go from there.”
Not all of the news from Tuesday’s game was good, however. Defenseman Jakob Chychrun departed the game early in the first period and he did not return, leading to a heavier workload for the remainder of the blueline crew for the rest of the game. Chychrun is listed as day-to-day.
“I’ll have to get the report this afternoon from [director of sports medicine and head athletic trainer Jason Serbus],” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “But we’ll see. I don’t have a determination yet on [Thursday’s game].”
While fellow ailing blueliner Matt Roy is getting closer to a return – he suffered a lower body injury in Washington’s Oct. 12 season opener – he is unlikely to be ready as early as Thursday’s Montreal game. Roy was still sporting a powder blue non-contact sweater at Washington’s optional Wednesday practice.
“He’s getting real close,” says Carbery of Roy. “I don’t know about [Thursday], but he’s right there. We’ve got a lot to figure out in the next few hours on the back end.”
Complicating blueline matters for the Caps, Alex Alexeyev was not available for Wednesday’s session.
“Alexeyev was away today for personal reasons as well, so we’ll see,” says Carbery. “We’ll have some clarity in the next few hours.”
If the Caps expect Alexeyev, Chychrun and Roy to be unavailable for Thursday’s game, they will likely need to recall a defenseman from AHL Hershey. The Bears are in action tonight, facing the Philadelphia Phantoms at Giant Center.
One of the more noticeable aspects of the Caps’ early season cohesiveness is the play of their defense in all three zones. Playing with just five defensemen for most of Tuesday’s game, the Caps limited New York – which entered the game as the NHL’s third-highest shot volume team – to just 19 shots on net. It’s the second time in the last four games that Washington has limited the opposition to fewer than 20 shots on net, and the Caps now lead the NHL with an average of 25.1 shots allowed per game.
“I think we did a good job of limiting our turnovers and making smart decisions with the puck in the offensive end,” says Caps’ defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk. “Obviously, they’re a team that can feast on transition, and when they can enter the zone with the puck, they’re rally high-end in the plays they make, and hanging onto it and creating zone time.
“But if you can make them dump it and make it a 50/50 [puck] – rather than them coming in with it 100 percent – that increases our odds to limit their [zone] time, and as you’ve seen over the past couple of years, when they have time in the [offensive] zone, they generally make it count.”
Montreal comes to town on the heels of a lopsided home ice loss against Seattle on Tuesday night. The Habs were in a 4-1 hole after 20 minutes of play, and the score got doubled over the final 40 as they fell in an 8-2 setback.
The Canadiens have had a rollercoaster ride in the early going of 2024-25. They blanked the Maple Leafs 1-0 in Montreal on opening night, and they won two of their first three games. A four-game slide (0-3-1) immediately followed, with all three regulation losses coming at home, and by a margin of three or more goals. The Habs got right this past weekend, sweeping a set of back-to-backs against St. Louis and at Philadelphia, but then came Tuesday’s beatdown at the hands of the Kraken.
Since opening the season with consecutive home wins, the Canadiens have lost four of their last five home games, getting outscored by a combined 27-13 in the process.
Montreal will now try its luck away from Bell Centre. The Habs are 1-1-1 in their three road games to date in ’24-25, and they’ll play six of their next seven games on the road.
