Dec. 3 vs. San Jose Sharks at Capital One Arena
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps Radio 24/7
San Jose Sharks (9-13-5)
Washington Capitals (17-6-1)
Following a week of high event, rollercoaster hockey, in which they were they only team in the NHL to win four games, the Caps put that four-game winning streak on the line in a Tuesday night tilt against the San Jose Sharks.
The Caps won four games in six nights – three of them on the road – and they scored four or more goals in all four of the victories. What’s really wild is they yielded four or more goals against in each of the last three games while winning all three. That’s a first in the franchise’s half-century history.
Washington won all four games in comeback fashion, and it won all four with significant contributions from its power play, which has been white hot for the last three weeks (13-for-29, 44.8 percent). For the first and second time this season, the Caps got game-winning goals on the power play in Florida (from Jakob Chychrun last Monday) and in Tampa Bay (from Tom Wilson on Wednesday). In Friday’s 5-4 win over the Islanders, Washington scored twice with the extra man, and it netted three power-play goals in the second period of Saturday’s 6-5 victory over the Devils in New Jersey.
On Nov. 9, the Caps woke up to find themselves at the very bottom of the NHL’s power play ledger, with an anemic 8.7 percent success rate. That night against the Blues in St. Louis, Alex Ovechkin and Connor McMichael both scored on the power play in an 8-1 victory over the Blues, sparking a remarkable upward climb that has continued with Ovechkin being out of the lineup for each of the last six games.
Washington has scored with the extra man in five straight games, eight of the last nine, and, starting with that Nov. 9 game in St. Louis, nine of the last 11 games.
“I’ve liked a bunch of stuff structurally,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery of his team’s extra-man unit. “But I think maybe the most impressive thing that group has done is Alex has been out, and so a couple of things come into play. One is we’ve had to throw something together pretty quickly, because we’ve had a staple there for years, in a certain spot and obviously a part of it. So these five guys have had to come together … and that has been really impressive to see them getting on the same page as quickly as they have with Alex being out.
“And then also taking a little bit of [responsibility]: ‘We’ve got to step up; we’ve got to provide some offense in some of these games, without [Ovechkin] and without his shot.’ And I feel they’ve done a really good job as a group of five of really stepping up and taking the bull by the horns and producing offensively on our power play. Those numbers are incredible since the greatest power play player of all time has been out of the lineup. You have to take a step back and really appreciate what those five guys are doing.”
To trim it down to just the last six games that Ovechkin has missed, the Caps are 8-for-20 (40%) on the power play, they’ve scored with the extra man in five of the six games, and they’ve had multiple power-play goals in each of the last two contests. The aforementioned game in St. Louis is the only other contest this season in which Washington has struck for more than one extra-man tally.
Eleven different Capitals skaters have registered power-play points this season, and nine have done so in the six games Ovechkin has missed. On Saturday night against the Devils in Newark, the Caps scored three power-play goals on three opportunities in a span of 10 minutes, turning a 2-1 deficit into a 4-2 lead.
Not only were they operating without Ovechkin, they didn’t have Dylan Strome for the first two of those Saturday night power plays in New Jersey, and they were going up against a fourth-ranked Devils penalty killing outfit. With 11 points (one goal, 10 assists), Strome is the Caps’ leading power play scorer; Ovechkin (four goals, three assists) and John Carlson (one goal, six assists) are tied for second with seven points each.
It was Strome who drew the double-minor penalty that put the Caps on a four-minute power play in the middle of the middle period, but he was unavailable because he was being stitched up; it was the second time in three games Strome put his team on a game-changing double minor power play because he took a stick to the grill.
Not to worry, kid. P-L Dubois moved from the second unit to the first, and he set up McMichael for the tying goal on the front end of the double minor. Then Lars Eller hopped over the boards and set up Chychrun’s go-ahead goal. Late in the period on a separate power play, Rasmus Sandin scored with help from rookie Ivan Miroshnichenko.
Eller, Sandin and Miroshnichenko all picked up their first power-play points of the season in the second period of Saturday’s game. And Sandin’s goal was the third extra-man goal scored by a defenseman in Washington’s last four games. Over the Caps’ first 20 games of the season, Carlson’s opening night power-play goal – the first goal scored by the team this season – on Oct. 12 had been the only one to come off the stick blade of a defenseman.
“It’s nice to see those guys stepping up in those moments when they get the opportunity,” says Carbery. “If – down the road – we need to get different looks, it gives you the confidence to put Sandin, Dubie and Miro in those spots to have success.”
The Caps’ three-week power play binge has pushed them all the way up from 32nd in the NHL on Nov. 9 to 14th in the League (at 22.7%) on Dec. 2, and the Caps are now sixth in the circuit in special team index (106); New Jersey leads at 114.7.
San Jose’s record is deceiving. The Sharks dropped nine straight games (0-7-2) out of the starting gates this season, and they’ve played to a respectable 9-6-3 mark since. San Jose has won only three of 14 road games (3-7-4), but it has earned a point in six of its last eight (3-2-3) away games.
For the Sharks, Tuesday’s game is the second stop on a six-game road trip that started with a 4-2 victory in Seattle on Saturday night. San Jose has won three of its last four, scoring 22 goals in the process; they hammered the Kings 7-2 and crushed the Kraken 8-5 in their recently completed homestand.
After Tuesday’s game in Washington, the Sharks will continue on to Tampa Bay, Florida, Carolina and St. Louis, respectively. San Jose’s next home game is a week from Saturday, on Dec. 14 against Utah.
Notes: Both Alex Ovechkin (fractured fibula) and Sonny Milano (upper body) were on the ice for the first time since their respective injuries. Two weeks to the day after suffering his injury in Utah, Ovechkin skated on his own. Milano, who was injured Nov. 6 against Nashville, wore a light blue non-contact sweater … Carlson, Strome, Nic Dowd and Brandon Duhaime each had “maintenance days” on Monday and did not skate.
