Caps Open Homestand vs. Coyotes
A nomadic stretch of hockey ends for Caps as they open four-game homestand on Saturday
Following a nomadic couple of weeks, the Caps are back home for an extended stay of one week and four games, their longest homestand of the 2022-23 season. First up are the Arizona Coyotes, who make their lone visit to the District this season on Saturday night.
A couple of hours after a 3-1 loss to the Red Wings in Detroit on Thursday night, the Caps landed at Dulles International Airport. Saturday's game against Arizona is the last of nine straight games the Caps have had to travel to play over a span of 17 days. Washington is 3-3-2 over the first eight of those games.
After arriving home from Detroit in the wee hours of Friday morning, the Caps took the day off - their first day off at home in two weeks - from rigors of the rink, and they'll reconvene on Saturday morning at MedStar Capitals Iceplex for a morning skate in preparation for the Coyotes.
"Yeah, I'm sure it'll be good," says Caps goalie Darcy Kuemper of the Friday off day. "Obviously we've got a lot of guys banged up right now, but the guys in the lineup are playing hard and pulling their weight.
"Unfortunately, it's been a little bit of a tough stretch here, but we've been keeping ourselves in games and getting points when we can. I think the day off will do us good and help us get back in the win column."
Washington has each of its last three games - over a span of four nights - but it pulled a point out of both ends of back-to-back losses to Carolina and Vegas earlier in the week. As Kuemper alludes to, injuries have dogged the Caps in the early going this season; they had seven players on injured reserve when they took the ice against the Red Wings on Thursday, and they released on update on one of those players Friday afternoon.
Winger Beck Malenstyn left Tuesday's game against Vegas after blocking a shot in the first period, and the team announced he underwent a surgical procedure to stabilize a finger fracture on his left hand and is expected to miss 6-8 weeks. A week ago in Nashville, the Caps lost defenseman John Carlson and T.J. Oshie - both to lower body injuries - in the first period of a game against the Predators, and neither has played since. Washington went on to win 3-0 Nashville, but it is winless (0-1-2) since.
Thursday's loss in Detroit was frustrating in that Washington played well at 5-on-5 but wasn't able to finish enough of its chances to pick up a point or two.
"Well, we've got to finish," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "We had chances, we kept pressing through the entire night. We had chances, we had looks, we had opportunities. We've got to find that next one, especially in the third period of a 1-1 game, we've got to find a way to get it into the net. There was opportunity, and we weren't able to cash in on it."
The Caps have been in every game they've played this season, and they've played more than 80 percent of their season to date - a dozen games and over 720 minutes - with the score either tied or the two teams within a single goal of one another. With a few well-placed goals here or there over the course of those dozen games, the Caps could have a few more points in the standings as well.
"I think I it could go both ways," says Caps center Dylan Strome of the amount of tight, close hockey the Caps have played in the season's early weeks. "Maybe the teams that are not high in that statistic are maybe winning so, it could go both ways.
"Every game is important, and every point is important to us. You know how close the playoff standings are at the end of the year, and it's one point here or it's one point there. Points matter and taking it to [overtime] is a good thing and getting that point is important, especially if it's against someone from the other conference.
"We are playing a lot of tight games, which also means that we're in every game. So our record could easily be one or two games better and, but we could have also won those two overtime games, and we'd be sitting at [7-5]. So I think it goes both ways. But it's nice to play in tight games where every shift matters, and that's something we've talked about. It's been a lot of good hockey, and it's fun to be in every game."
After coming home from a season-opening six-game road trip with a 2-4-0 record, the Coyotes christened their new Tempe arena with a four-game homestand, going 1-2-1. Now they're set to open a stretch of 14 straight road games in Washington on Saturday night while annex construction is completed at their new Mullett Arena home.
Arizona will play those 14 road games over a rather leisurely stretch of 33 days. The Coyotes will play only one set of back-to-back games during that span, facing the Devils and Rangers on back-to-back nights next weekend.
The Coyotes bring the League's third most lethal power play unit with them to the District; they're clicking at a 31.4 percent rate with the extra man. Arizona's penalty-killing group has also been effective, killing off 82.1 percent of the opposition's power plays to rank 10th in the NHL.
Where the Yotes have struggled is at 5-on-5 where they've given up 32 goals (third most) in 10 games while scoring just 13 (second fewest) themselves.
