Caps Host Stars on Sunday
Carrying a season-high four-game winning streak, Caps start home-heavy stretch on Sunday against Dallas
Having played five of their previous six games on the road, the Caps are back in the District and ready to settle in for a home-heavy stretch of hockey. They'll host the Dallas Stars on Sunday afternoon at Capital One Arena, where they will play eight of their next 10 games.
Washington enters Sunday's game with a season-high four-game winning streak, and it does so as the only NHL team without a regulation loss in the month of March. After sweeping a set of back-to-back games on the road in Columbus and Carolina, respectively, the Caps are 7-0-1 in their last eight games. The eight-game point streak matches the Capitals' longest of the season, a 5-0-3 run that spanned the month of October.
Most recently, the Caps overcame the Hurricanes in Carolina on Friday night, taking a 4-3 shootout decision in a game that had a playoff feel to it. The victory marked the fifth time in six games that the Caps have rallied back from a deficit in the third period to pick up at least a point. Caps captain Alex Ovechkin scored the game-tying goal on the power play with 5:04 remaining in regulation and won it for Washington in the shootout, where he was the lone scorer on both sides.
"I thought it was awesome," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette of Friday's game. "It might have been one of the best games we've played in all year. We had a real good response physically in the first period, and they're a competitive group as well. And so it led to be a great hockey game.
"I thought the physicality part of it dropped a little bit in the second and the third, but in the first period, man, that was live."
Washington's six-game stretch of comeback success started in Calgary on March 8, and it ended on Friday night in Carolina. During that span, the Caps played six games in six different cities and three different time zones, and they finished that run with 11 of 12 possible points, despite losing Lars Eller (COVID-19 protocol) and T.J. Oshie (lower body) along the way, and despite losing Nic Dowd and Trevor van Riemsdyk (both with unknown ailments) late in the Carolina contest.
When the Caps won in Calgary, they beat a Flames team that was 12-0-1 in its previous 13 home games, outscoring foes by a combined total of 60-21 over that stretch. And when they bookended that six-game stretch with another win in Carolina on Friday, they did so against a Hurricanes team that also entered the game with a 12-0-1 record in its previous 13 home contests.
"It's awesome, I think it's great," says Caps center Nicklas Backstrom of the team's resilient stretch. "Any time you can comeback like that, it's a good thing. And in a game like [Friday's] it's obviously great. I felt like we were going tonight, and that's a great team over there. So we'll take this win and move on. That's a big two points."
The Stars are finishing up a four-game road trip in Sunday's game, and they're also concluding a set of back-to-back games. Dallas was on Long Island on Saturday afternoon, where it suffered a 4-2 setback to the Islanders, a game in which the Stars outshot the Isles 39-25. Brock Nelson had a hat trick in the third period for New York.
Dallas is one of a cluster of clubs vying for playoff positioning in the Western Conference, and the Stars have given themselves a chances with a 15-8-1 run over the last two months.
Former Caps goaltender Braden Holtby signed a one-year deal with the Stars last summer after spending last season with the Vancouver Canucks. Holtby, who sits one victory shy of 300 for his NHL career, won 282 games in 10 seasons with the Capitals. A two-time Vezina Trophy finalist, he won the Vezina in 2015-16 when he won 48 games to match Martin Brodeur's all-time single-season record.
Although he is traveling with the Stars on the trip, Holtby is nursing a lower body injury and is not expected to be available for duty in Sunday's game, his first return to Capital One Arena after his departure as a free agent following the 2019-20 season.
Holtby saw action in seven games in January, his busiest month of the season to date. Since suffering a 5-0 loss to the Caps on Jan. 28 in Dallas in his first career appearance against Washington, he has started only two games, largely because of his ailment. His most recent outing was a 4-3 overtime victory over the Jets in Winnipeg on March 4.
