Jan. 16 vs. Anaheim Ducks at Capital One Arena
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Stream: MonSports.net/Stream
Radio: 106.7 The Fan, Capitals Radio 24/7
Anaheim Ducks (15-27-1)
Washington Capitals (20-15-6)
Between now and their bye week/All-Star break at the end of the month, the Caps will play half a dozen games, all against Western Conference foes. The first of those games is the opener of a two-game homestand, a Tuesday night tilt against the Anaheim Mighty Ducks.
Over this past weekend, the Caps split a pair of one-goal decisions in a set of home-and-home back-to-backs with the New York Rangers. With Charlie Lindgren delivering excellent goaltending in both games, the Caps authored a come-from-behind 3-2 victory at home on Saturday, only to fall 2-1 the following afternoon at Madison Square Garden.
Although they’re one of just a handful of teams that has yet to suffer more than two regulation losses in succession at any point this season, the Caps have been unable to cobble together consecutive victories for over three weeks now, and they reach the midpoint of the campaign with 20 wins in 41 games. Their points percentage of .561 ranks 19th in the NHL, 10th in the Eastern Conference and seventh in the Metropolitan Division.
In the tightly packed Metro and Eastern Conference standings, the Caps are still in the thick of the chase for the eight playoff berths. Five of their last six regulation losses have come at the hands of their fellow Metro Division occupants, but prior to that stretch, the Caps put together an impressive 16-6-4 run over a span of 26 games. That’s a .692 points percentage – equivalent to roughly a third of a full season – and one that would translate to just over 113 points over a full 82-game slate.
That’s the form they’ll need to find in the back half of the season.
“I definitely think we know a lot more about ourselves now,” says Caps’ center Dylan Strome, who led the team with 15 goals in the first half. “I think we know more clearly what it takes for us to have a good game and to be successful. Before [last Sunday’s win over Los Angeles], we got away from it a little bit – against Carolina, the Islanders, the Rangers – and even against Pittsburgh after the first period, pretty much the same thing.”
Despite splitting the weekend set with the Rangers, the Caps put together two strong games consecutively, playing well enough to win both of those games. Consistency has been lacking for the last three weeks, and they’ll be aiming to build off a strong weekend against the Metro Division leader as they move into the second half of the season.
“There was big talk at the beginning of the year about the identity of our team,” says winger T.J. Oshie, whose goal on Sunday moved him into 10th place on Washington’s all-time list (183). “And I think we just haven’t seen it consistently, but it is building, it is in the works, and you can see it when we are playing at our best. We’re moving the puck well, we’re defending very well, our goaltenders are great, special teams is going well. We do have a lot of maturity on our team, but we do have a lot of young guys with a lot of inexperience as well. So we’re navigating through those different experiences, and really finding our footing here.”
Washington has had to defend more than it would like in the first half, because it hasn’t had the puck as much as it would like. But although that’s caused the Caps to defend more than they would like, they’ve done so diligently and doggedly throughout the season.
As has been the case for most of the season, finding a way to score more goals would benefit the Caps immensely. Just over half – 21 of 41 – of Washington’s first half games were decided by a single goal, and 13 of their 20 victories (13-2-6) have come in one-goal affairs. Washington had 15 first half-games in which it scored one or zero goals (1-13-1), and that’s one more than it had in the entirety of the 2022-23 season (1-12-1).
Merely avoiding being limited to one or no goals scored could be a boon for the Caps, who are 19-2-5 in games in which they score two or more goals.
“We’re doing everything we can to find different ways to score,” said Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery following Sunday’s 2-1 loss. “And I thought our process was good tonight, I really did. I thought we gave the activity around [Rangers’ goalie Igor] Shesterkin, I thought volume of delivery, secondary chances [were good], I thought guys were working to get to the interior.
“I can't fault the process. We have to continue to work, because it's not easy to win hockey games in the National Hockey League scoring one goal a game, and we will continue. The power play needs to get better; we’ve got to get some continuity there. It was not good again tonight. [We have] some different people working in, so that is an issue for us as well. But we will continue to work on our 5-on-5 scoring as well.”
If the Caps are able to jump start their offense while maintaining the other aspects of their game and a reasonable semblance of team health, they may be able to return to the postseason in what promises to be competitive and compelling multi-team chase over the next three months.
“In some of those games when we’re up late 2-1, we need to have that ‘step on the throat’ mentality,” says Strome. “We’ve kind of let other teams hang around in games this year. We’ve had some success in overtime and some in the shootout, but we still have six overtime losses and we have at least six or seven overtime wins.
“When you let teams hang around, things aren’t going to always go your way. But I think in the next 20 or maybe 25 games, we need to have that killer instinct when we’re up 2-1 or 3-2 game, make it 4-2 and then 5-2, like other teams have been doing to us when we get down. We need to have that kind of mindset that when we have a lead; we can’t tiptoe through games. It’s tough to win in this League, and in that sense, when we have a lead, we’ve got to take advantage of it and step on their throats.”
For Anaheim, Tuesday’s game is the back half of a set of back-to-backs. The Ducks rallied for a 5-4 victory over the Panthers in Florida in a Monday MLK Day matinee. Cooling off the Cats – who entered Monday’s game at 9-1-0 in their previous 10 – required Anaheim to dig out of a pair of two-goal holes, and Alex Killorn’s second goal of the game delivered two points to the Ducks.
Since the rebuilding Ducks rolled out to an uplifting 9-6-0 start to the season, they’ve struggled mightily. Monday’s win leaves them at 6-21-1 in the 28 games since.
The Ducks and Caps met previously this season in Anaheim, a game in which Washington eked out a 5-4 victory after erupting for four goals in the first period. Tom Wilson netted his first career hat trick for the Caps in that Nov. 30 game, and he has 10 goals in 18 career games against Anaheim. The only team he has scored more against is Pittsburgh (11 goals in 40 games).
Tuesday’s game in D.C. is the fifth contest in a six-game road stretch for Anaheim that culminates on Saturday in San Jose. The Ducks are 2-2-0 on the trip to date, sandwiching wins over Nashville and Florida around setbacks in Carolina and Tampa Bay, respectively.
