March 22 vs. Carolina Hurricanes at Capital One Arena
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Stream: MonSports.net/Stream
Radio: 106.7 The Fan, Capitals Radio 24/7
Carolina Hurricanes (43-20-6)
Washington Capitals (33-26-9)
The Capitals’ four-game homestand continues on Friday night when Washington hosts the Carolina Hurricanes for the second and final time this season. The two longtime divisional rivals will meet once more after Friday’s game in the District; the Caps face the Canes in Carolina two weeks from Friday in the finale of the season’s series.
Washington opened the homestand with a 7-3 setback at the hands of the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday night.
The Caps carried a three-game winning streak into the homestand opener against Toronto, and one of the features of that short spree of prosperity was a consistent and steady lineup; Washington dressed the same 20 players and had the same line combinations and defensive pairings for each of the three games, a real rarity for the Caps in recent seasons. But just ahead of Wednesday’s homestand opener with the Maple Leafs, the team announced that both T.J. Oshie (upper body) and Aliaksei Protas (lower body) would not play.
On Thursday, the Caps also learned that right wing Tom Wilson was offered an in-person hearing with the League’s Department of Player Safety, relating to a hi-sticking infraction on Toronto’s Noah Gregor late in the third period of Wednesday’s game. Wilson was assessed a double-minor penalty on the play.
Against the Leafs, Washington fell behind just 16 seconds after opening puck drop when Toronto center Auston Matthews kicked off a career night with his League-leading 56th goal of the season. The Capitals righted themselves quickly, controlling play and outdoing Toronto in high danger scoring chances by a 6-1 count in the first 20 minutes, according to naturalstattrick.com. But Washington wasn’t able to find the back of the net with any of those first-period chances; Leafs’ goaltender Joseph Woll stopped all 10 of the shots he faced in the first.
For the second time in as many periods, the Leafs scored in the first minute of the middle frame to double their lead. Washington cut into that cushion with an Alex Ovechkin power-play goal midway through the middle frame, the first of three times the Caps were able to pull within a goal. But any hopes of a late Caps comeback were dashed by the combination of a last-minute goal against in the second – giving Toronto a 4-2 lead entering the third – and the Caps taking five minor penalties in the final frame.
Matthews finished the night with five points (two goals, three assists) and Max Domi notched four assists. For the Caps, the bright spot was Ovechkin’s second consecutive two-goal game. The twin tallies pushed the Caps’ captain’s total to 23 on the season and 845 for his career, leaving him 50 goals shy of passing Wayne Gretzky (894) at the top of the NHL’s all-time goal-scoring ledger.
Wednesday night’s game was uncharacteristically poor for the Caps defensively; they had just won three straight games while yielding a combined total of four goals against.
“We can do a way better job of closing in the defensive zone,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “I felt like we were just shadowing for so much [of the game], whether it was on the puck – being able to close and get into people – or off the puck, the next play, we were just a step behind, which isn’t like us.”
The Caps will need to improve that aspect of their game on Friday against Carolina. They know they can’t afford to let losses pile up at this stage of the season.
“We’re going to have to,” says Carbery. “We’ll regroup [Thursday] and use it to reset mentally and sort of recalibrate. We’ll just focus on [Thursday] and then we’ll figure things out for our next game.”
As it turned out, Thursday morphed into a day off, aside from congregating in the morning for the annual team photo at MedStar Capitals Iceplex. Given the rigors of Washington’s recent schedule – Wednesday’s game against Toronto was its sixth contest spanning four different time zones in 10 nights – as well as what lies ahead, it was probably a good idea to use Thursday as a day of rest. Rest is a weapon too, especially at this stage of the season, and Carbery noted after Monday’s game in Calgary that his team seemed to have emptied its collective tank by the end of a grueling five-game trip.
The Caps will reconvene on Friday morning for a morning skate ahead of the game against the Hurricanes.
Friday’s game features the return of former Caps’ center Evgeny Kuznetsov, who returns to Capital One Arena for the first time since the swap that sent him to Carolina two weeks ago. Kuznetsov played
Like the Leafs before them, Carolina will come into town on the heels of a game against the Flyers the night before. Toronto fell 4-3 to the Flyers on Tuesday, and the Hurricanes prevailed over Philadelphia in overtime on Thursday night. Seth Jarvis scored in the extra session to give Carolina a 3-2 victory.
The Hurricanes handed the Caps a 6-2 setback here on Jan. 5 in the most recent meeting between the two teams. Washington won the opener of the season’s series, a 2-1 shootout decision in Raleigh on Dec. 17.
Since the trade deadline, the Canes are 7-1-0. Carolina is 15-1-2 in its last 18 road games.
