Caps Host Metro Clash with Columbus
The Caps open a two-game homestand on Saturday against their Metro rivals, the Blue Jackets
The Caps come home for a short two-game homestand, starting with a Saturday night Metro Division match-up against the Columbus Blue Jackets, the third of four meetings between the two teams this season.
Washington and Columbus are both among the top four teams in the Metropolitan Division - the Caps lead and Columbus is in third place - as they prepare to tangle in the District on Saturday. Each of the four top teams in the division has won at least seven of its last 10 games, enabling that quartet to create a seven-point divide between themselves and the four also-rans beneath them on the Metro standings ladder.
The Caps will carry a three-game winning streak into Saturday's game with the Jackets. Washington comes into the game on the heels of a gratifying 4-2 win over the Bruins in Boston on Thursday night, the Caps' 14th successive win over the Bruins and their 10th straight road victory over Eastern Conference opponents.
"I don't really think there's a really good reason," says Caps center Nicklas Backstrom of his team's ongoing mastery of the Bruins. "I heard about it before the game, but it's not what you think about it. You think about Boston as a great top 10 hard team to play against, and a hard building to come in to play. Every time you play them you know it's going to be a really tough game.
"So it's just fortunate for us that we've been able to be successful lately. Even today a tough building to come into, but I thought we played good defensively and did not give them a whole lot. They had a lot of shots I think we played really tight back there and [Braden Holtby] was great back there too."
Indeed, Holtby was great back there. Against the Bruins, he typically is. When Boston's Ryan Donato scored the first of his team's two goals on Thursday, it ended a shutout run of more than 111 minutes in which Holtby kept the Bruins from lighting the lamp. A few years back, he authored three consecutive shutout wins over the Bruins. Thursday's victory over Boston leaves Holtby with a 16-2-0 lifetime mark against the B's.
"They make it hard on me with traffic and those type of things - speed, the physical game," says Holtby of the Bruins. "In an 82-game schedule, sometimes it's tough to get a game like that, and sometimes it's a little on the softer side of hockey. That's just sometimes the way it is, I find. But whenever we play Boston, whether it's the history, they're always hard-fought games."
The Caps and Blue Jackets have split their first two meetings this season, with each winning in the other's building. Columbus took a 2-1 decision in the District on Nov. 9, edging the Caps with a pair of power-play goals. Washington returned the favor a month later in Columbus when Holtby and the Capitals put a 4-0 whitewashing on the Jackets on Dec. 8. Dmitrij Jaskin scored his first goal as a member of the Capitals and Travis Boyd netted the first goal of his NHL career that night, both beating Columbus netminder Sergei Bobrovsky.
Speaking of Bobrovsky, his name popped into the news on Thursday when the Jackets announced that the goaltender would not be with the team when it hosted the Nashville Predators on Thursday night, a game that resulted in a 4-3 overtime win for Columbus.
"There are certain expectations and values that we have established for our players that define our culture," said Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen. "An incident occurred in which Sergei failed to meet those expectations and values, so we made the decision that he would not be with the team for [Thursday's] game. This is an internal matter and we will have no further comment at this time."
On Friday, Bobrovsky put things right enough with his teammates and the organization to get back on the ice for practice, and whatever the incident was has been put to rest, and he will be with the team when it travels to Washington for Saturday's game, and is the likely starter. The Jackets are playing the front end of a set of back-to-backs on Saturday; they return home to host the New York Rangers on Sunday.
Bobrovsky is in the final season of his contract in 2018-19, and his contract carries an annual salary cap hit of $7.425 million, third highest among all NHL goaltenders. The Bobrovsky contract also carries a full no movement clause, as do the pacts of the two goaltenders whose salary cap hits exceed Bobrovsky's, Montreal's Carey Price ($10.5 million) and the Rangers' Henrik Lundqvist ($8.5 million).
The 30-year-old, two-time Vezina Trophy-winning goaltender has been lukewarm to the idea of exploring a contract extension in Columbus, as has teammate Artemi Panarin, the Jackets' leading scorer with 47 points. Panarin is also in the final year of his current deal.
On the good news front, Columbus coach John Tortorella became the first U.S.-born coach to reach the 600-win plateau on Thursday. Tortorella is the sixth active coach and the 19th in league history to achieve that milestone.
