Dec. 29 vs. Detroit Red Wings at Little Caesars Arena
Time: 5:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps Radio 24/7
Washington Capitals (24-9-2)
Detroit Red Wings (13-18-4)
Late Sunday afternoon in Detroit, the Caps will conclude their ninth set of back-to-back games of the 2024-25 season while also playing their final road contest of calendar 2024. A night after handing the Maple Leafs a 5-2 setback in Toronto in their first game after the NHL’s three-day holiday hiatus, the Caps face the Red Wings in Motown in their lone visit to Michigan this season.
The Leafs finished their League-leading ninth set of back-to-backs with their loss to Washington on Saturday, and the Caps will match that total on Sunday in the Motor City.
With captain Alex Ovechkin back in the lineup for Saturday’s game against the Leafs, the Caps managed to do enough good things in the game’s first 40 minutes to carry a slim 3-2 lead into the third. The Caps followed both Toronto goals with goals of their own less than two minutes later, and two of Washington’s first three goals came via extended offensive zone shifts from the Nic Dowd line, which returned to its early season iteration of Dowd between Brandon Duhaime and Taylor Raddysh as a result of Ovechkin’s return.
In the third, the Caps got stellar netminding from Logan Thompson, who made a number of excellent stops throughout the game. But Thompson was at his best in the third with the game on the line; he denied Nick Robertson, John Tavares, Pontus Holmberg and Mitch Marner on excellent looks in the third. All four stops came while the Caps were still holding a one-goal lead.
A couple of clutch penalty kills and a Tom Wilson tally on Washington’s lone power play of the game in the third gave the Caps a bit of breathing room, and Ovechkin’s empty-net breakaway goal – No. 869 of his illustrious career – allowed them to get on their way to Motown with two points packed safely in the belly of the team’s plane.
“These games are always tough coming off the break,” says Wilson. “But I thought our battle was good, which it has been all year. That’s been our foundation, just playing hard and playing together, and giving ourselves a chance to win. Thommer came up with some timely saves, and the rest of the group did enough to get it done.”
Washington did enough to take the wind out of Toronto’s sails a night after it faced Detroit on the road, and the Dowd line accounted for two of the goals – from Dowd and Jakob Chychrun – while the Hendrix Lapierre line accounted for the Caps’ other 5-on-5 goal and drew the power play that led to Wilson’s goal.
“If you look at that game,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery, “the difference in that game for me – and how we’re able to get two points out of that game – is Nic Dowd’s line and Lappy’s. They scored the [first] goal – [Andrew Mangiapane] on the 2-on-1 – and Mange earns the power play, and we capitalize there. Those two lines were difference makers for us tonight.”
With a 35-save night in the Washington nets, Thompson improved to 14-2-2 on the season. Saturday’s game marks the 11th time in his last 14 starts that the Calgary native has yielded two or fewer goals against. Thompson is 10-2-2 with a 2.14 GAA and a .926 save pct. across those 14 starts, dating back to Nov. 2.
“It seems like he plays that way every night,” says Chychrun of Thompson. “So yeah, he’s feeling it and playing really well. We could definitely do better in front of him still, but he’s there when we need him, and that’s huge.”
Washington goes into Sunday’s game with a .714 points percentage, tops in the Eastern Conference and third in the NHL. Along with Winnipeg, the Capitals are one of only two teams in the League that rank among the top five in both goals for (second, with 3.71 per game) and goals against (fifth, with 2.60 per game).
As they take the ice for the second game of the Todd McLellan era in Detroit, the Red Wings find themselves sharing the bottom rung of the Eastern Conference standings ladder with the Buffalo Sabres. Seeking to avoid a ninth straight season on the outside of the Stanley Cup playoffs, Detroit GM Steve Yzerman made the franchise’s first midseason coaching change in nearly four decades on Dec. 26. The last time the Wings changed horses in midstream was midway through the 1985-86 season, when Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman Brad Park replaced Harry Neale behind the Wings bench on Dec. 30, 1985.
Those ’85-86 Wings started 8-23-4 in 35 games during Neale’s final NHL coaching roundup, and Park wasn’t able to lift them any higher. Detroit was 9-34-2 during Park’s 45-game tour of duty as bench boss, his only NHL head coaching gig.
This season, Derek Lalonde guided the Wings to a 13-17-4 mark over 34 games before McLellan took over on Dec. 26. In McLellan’s debut behind the Red Wings’ bench on Friday night against Toronto, Detroit absorbed a 5-2 defeat.
