Caps Host Flyers
Caps take aim at fourth straight win on Tuesday in finale of season's series against Philadelphia
The Capitals finish up a two-game homestand on Tuesday night, closing out their 2021-22 season's series with the Philadelphia Flyers. Starting with Tuesday's game against the Flyers, the Caps head into their final 10 games of the regular season.
Washington carries a modest three-game winning streak into Tuesday's game, giving it a chance to match its longest winning run of the season to date against Philadelphia. The Caps won four games in a row from Nov. 8-14, and they duplicated that feat from March 11-18. Since the beginning of March, the Capitals are 12-4-1.
Most recently, the Caps downed the Bruins on Sunday afternoon by a 4-2 count. Sunday's win completed a run of three victories over playoff-bound Eastern Conference teams, and it marked the first game in the last 10 in which Washington has limited the opposition to two or fewer goals.
"It was a fairly tight defensive game both ways," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "I think we just had to keep working on trying to generate offensively. I thought the neutral zone was okay; we made good decisions. But when we got into the offensive zone, as the game went on I thought we generated a little bit more."
In defeating Tampa Bay, the Penguins in Pittsburgh, and Boston, respectively, last week, the Caps got contributions from up and down their lineup, all while their lineup was in a state of flux, as it has been all season. Garnet Hathaway missed the Tampa Bay game, Conor Sheary missed the Pittsburgh game and Nicklas Backstrom missed Sunday's contest with Boston, but the Caps adjusted and made do.
Washington's best players were at their best last week, as were its special teams. Defenseman John Carlson was named the League's second star of the week ending April 10; Carlson had multiple-point games in each of the Caps' three wins, and he totaled three goals and eight points along the way.
"It was good efforts," says Carlson of the team's three-game run. "We weren't happy with how we were playing and wanted to make a stand. Against three good teams, it's a pretty good run for us and it's something to build on going forward now."
The Caps were better with and without the puck at both ends of the ice, aside from a few rugged patches in their own end in the games against the Lightning and the Penguins. They excelled at some of the details of the game, laying more hits (114) and blocking more shots (67) than any club last week. Those last numbers help highlight an area where the Capitals could seek some improvement over the final 10 games, making better puck decisions and spending more time in the offensive zone.
"It can go both ways," says Caps center Nic Dowd of the team's recent shot-blocking bonanza. "If we're blocking a lot of shots, it means we're in the defensive zone too much. We'd rather not have as many blocked shots because there aren't as many attempts. But if worse comes to worse, it's guys' responsibility to get in lanes and block shots."
In its first three games against the Flyers this season, Washington has had its hands full. Philly trimmed the Caps here by a 2-1 count back on Nov. 6 in one of the Caps' poorest overall efforts to that point of the season. When the teams met again in Philadelphia on Feb. 17, Washington needed a stirring late comeback to win, sparked by the combination of Hathaway and Carl Hagelin. Down 3-2 with less than three minutes remaining in regulation, Hagelin helped set up Hathaway twice in less than two minutes, enabling the Caps to tie the game and then take the lead with just over a minute left in a 5-3 victory.
Nine nights later, the Flyers handed the Caps a second 2-1 defeat, this one in Philadelphia. On Tuesday in D.C., the Capitals will be looking to even the season's series against the Flyers, one of only a few none-playoff teams on their schedule the rest of the way. After three wins against teams ahead of them in the standings followed by a day off on Monday, the Caps need to get up for a divisional opponent in their last home game before an 11-day, five-game trip gets underway later this week in Toronto.
"I think it's just consistency," says Dowd. "Not [referring to] next game, but any game throughout the season, if the emotion isn't there, you just have to rely and sit back on your systems and sit back on each guy doing their job and doing it well.
"Every game isn't going to be like [the last three]. But we have veteran players, and they understand how they have to play, and just relying on the system will get us through games that may not be as emotional as other ones. But it's every player's job to show up at the rink prepared every single night the exact same way."
