Caps Take on Hawks
Caps finish up a road heavy stretch of hockey on Tuesday night in Chicago, seeking fifth straight win
Carrying a four-game winning streak for the first time this season, the Caps reach the end of a rugged patch of scheduling on Tuesday night in Chicago against the Blackhawks. Tuesday's tilt in the Windy City concludes a run of eight of nine games on the road for Washington, which will have spent 17 of the last 19 nights on the road by the time it arrives back in the District.
The Caps come to Chicago on the heels of an impressive 5-2 victory over the Jets in Winnipeg on Sunday night. Facing a Jets team that entered the game with the best record in the Western Conference and the fourth best mark in the League, the Caps erupted for four goals in a dozen minutes in the second period. That was more than enough support for Caps goaltender Charlie Lindgren, who won his fourth straight start in a span of seven nights with a 29-save effort.
"I think we took another step in the right direction with our 5-on-5 game today, especially in the second period when we were really strong," says Caps center Lars Eller. "We got contributions from a lot of places, and Chucky stood strong in net."
Lindgren sprinkled some excellent saves throughout the three periods, but his first period stops on Morgan Barron and then Pierre-Luc Dubois kept the game scoreless and allowed Washington to get on the board first in the second period, the first time the Caps have scored first over the course of their four-game winning streak.
"[Lindgren] kept us in it," says Eller, "and that was important today, especially in this building where they really feed off the crowd. And they've been having a good season, so it isn't an easy place to come in and get a win."
Prior to Sunday's win in Winnipeg, the Caps had won only two of their prior seven visits (2-3-2) to Manitoba's capital city, scoring a grand total of just 13 goals in those seven contests.
During the life of his winning streak, Lindgren is 4-0-0 with a 1.50 GAA and a .949 save pct. On Monday afternoon, the NHL named Lindgren as its first star of the week ending Dec. 11.
Sunday's victory also gives Washington a 7-2-1 record over its last 10 games, and a number of good trends continued for the Caps, who again won the special teams battle with a power-play goal and with Marcus Johansson's shorthanded penalty shot goal - his first shorthanded goal in more than 11 years. Eleven of Washington's 18 skaters picked up a point in Sunday's victory, and 20 of the 21 skaters the Caps have deployed over those last 10 games have collected at least a point over that span.
The Caps also improved to 14-1-1 on the season in games in which they score at least three goals. Better yet, in a season in which goal scoring is at its highest since 1995-96, the Caps have now gone four straight games without permitting more than two goals against for the first time since Feb. 25-March 3, 2021.
Remarkably, they've authored that four-game stretch with No. 1 netminder Darcy Kuemper on injured reserve and with at least two of their top six defensemen sidelined for each of those victories. Rookie defenseman Alex Alexeyev suffered an upper body injury during Friday's home game against Seattle, and veteran rearguard Erik Gustafsson missed his first game of the season on Sunday after suffering an upper body injury during the morning skate.
With those two defensemen and sophomore Martin Fehervary out of the lineup, the Caps got an excellent game from Dmitry Orlov, who stepped in against the Jets following a 16-game injury absence, his longest stretch out of the Washington lineup since he missed the entire 2014-15 season. Playing for the first time since Nov. 5, Orlov stepped in and logged 21:29 in ice time while collecting a pair of assists. And Lucas Johansen, recalled from Hershey earlier in the day, stepped in and gave the Caps a solid 13:32 in his third NHL game.
"I think we have just done a really good job of managing the puck," says Caps defensemen Trevor van Riemsdyk of the team's strong 10-game stretch. "Even that Devils game [a 5-1 loss on Nov. 26] if you look at the score after, you think it might not have been a great effort for us, I thought we did a good job. We had a lot of [offensive] zone time, had a bunch of good looks and sometimes that's how it goes.
"But I think we've done a good job of just managing the puck. We've got a big team that can skate, which is a really hard thing to deal with on the forecheck. So when we just get pucks behind [the opposing defense], we've seen it. It's hard for a defense when you add a bunch of guys like [Aliaksei Protas] and [Anthony] Mantha and [Alex Ovechkin] and guys like that just bearing down on you. It's really hard to break the puck out when the [defensemen] are crashing down the walls, and it makes it really difficult on teams. So when we're doing that, I think that's when we're at our best."
Chicago is in the midst of an admitted rebuild, and the Hawks are in the basement of the Central Division a third of the way through the season. Memories of three Stanley Cup championships in the last dozen years will comfort the locals during the down time while the Hawks reboot, as Chicago has won just seven of its first 26 games this season.
As they enter Tuesday's game with Washington, the Hawks have won just one of their last dozen games (1-10-1) and they've yielded three or more goals in 11 of those 12 contests while scoring two or fewer goals in eight of them. But no NHL team can be taken lightly, and the Caps have won only one of their last four visits to Chicago (1-2-1), getting dented for a total of 23 goals against in those four games.
