Kings Of The Highway – Finishing up a seven-game road trip and their pre-holiday break schedule, the Los Angeles Kings are in town to provide the opposition for the second game of Washington’s brief two-game home stay. The Kings are 3-1-2 on their journey to date, and they’re a 9-7-4 road team this season.
Along with San Jose and St. Louis, the Kings are one of only three NHL teams that will play more than half (21 of 41) of its road games for the season between opening night at the League’s three-day holiday break.
“By our numbers and through basically all of the different areas – line rushes, defensive zone coverage, and giving up scoring chances – they’re number one in the National Hockey League, meaning that they give up the least of expected goals,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery of the Kings. “So they’re the top defensive team in the NHL.
“The way we look at it when you look at the film, they always have numbers back, so they’re not going to give you anything for free. There’s not going to be – or very rarely will they give you – a 2-on-1 or a breakaway where all of a sudden now you’re in cold on [Darcy] Kuemper or [David] Rittich. So now you’re going to have to earn offense, and I think it’s a good segue from who we just saw [on Friday] in Carolina, because they’re very similar. You have to work for everything you get; you have to beat someone to the inside or you have to win a box out situation. You’ve got to get to the interior and get to the net, and you’ve got to get your shot through. All those things that Carolina does at such a high level that make it difficult to create offense, LA does the exact same thing.
“I’m hoping we can carry over some of the things we did the other night against Carolina and even do a better job offensively against the top defensive team in the NHL.”
Los Angeles opened the season with a seven-game trip, going 3-2-2 on that road run.
A Dozen Down – Friday’s 3-1 win over Carolina concluded one of the most difficult patches of the 2024-25 scheduled for the Capitals, a stretch of a dozen games in 26 nights in which they had to travel to play each contest. The Caps concluded that stretch of games with a nifty 9-2-1 record. Now, they won’t need to travel to play Sunday’s game against the Kings, but they’ll be on the move for each of the four games after that, the final four games of calendar 2024.
Sunday’s game against Los Angeles starts the Caps’ eighth set of back-to-back games this season. Washington faces a total of 13 sets of back-to-back games in 2024-25, with nine of them coming in the front half of the campaign.
Only one team – the Toronto Maple Leafs – has had as many sets of back-to-backs as the Capitals have had to this point of the season, and only the Leafs and the Caps will have had as many as nine sets of back-to-backs between opening night of the 2024-25 season and New Year’s Day of 2025.
Defensive December – Following a 7-2-0 October and a 10-4-1 November, the Caps are 5-2-1 with five more games remaining on the December docket. While their excellence in the season’s first two months was fueled largely by special teams and offensive output, the Caps have dusted off their defensive prowess in the final month of the calendar year.
Washington has yielded only 15 goals against in its eight games this month, and its average of 1.88 goals against per game is fourth-best in the NHL this month. The Caps have permitted only 11 goals at 5-on-5 this month, tied for second fewest in the League behind only New Jersey (eight).
The Caps’ staunch defense in December has helped mask a decline in scoring. The Caps have averaged just 2.5 tallies per tilt this month, which is tied for 24th in the NHL over that span.
“I think it was that lull that we hit where we were feeling really good about ourselves offensively,” says Carbery. “Pucks were going in, and everybody’s got that hot touch. And as that dried up a touch, we had to dial back in with our checking without the puck, and our details without the puck. And I think we’ve done a really nice job of getting back to that; it’s a foundational thing that we pride ourselves on doing as good as anybody in this League, and so if you do that at a high level, you give yourselves a chance to win, no matter how many goals you’re scoring. And over the last little bit, I feel like we’ve done a much better job of that as we were able to score our way through some of those issues [earlier in the season].
“And it’s natural. As players, when you’re scoring five [goals] a game, some of the details away from the puck [diminish], and I take responsibility for that, too, As coaches you sort of gloss over some of the mistakes. You know – we won 5-3 tonight, but there were some not-so-great sequences without the puck and not-so-great checking situations that you sort of gloss over and say, ‘Hey, c’mon. We need to be better.’
“Realistically now of late, we’ve tried to get those details dialed in.”
Washington has permitted two or fewer goals against in six of its last eight games, including five consecutively at one point. The Caps are 15-1-1 when they limit the opposition to two or fewer goals against this season.
In The Nets – Charlie Lindgren downed the Hurricanes on Friday night in his first home start in nearly a month (since Nov. 23), earning his 10th victory of the season. That makes Washington the first NHL team with a pair of goaltenders with 10 or more victories this season.
Thompson continues the Caps’ netminding rotation on Sunday against Los Angeles. With a dozen victories on the season, his next one puts him more than halfway to matching his career best of 25, established last season. Thompson has yielded two or fewer goals against in nine of his last dozen starts, forging an 8-2-2 mark to go along with a 2.24 GAA and a .921 save pct. over that span (h/t Carter Myers).
In six career appearances and starts against the Kings, Thompson is 4-2-0 with a 2.62 GAA and a .919 save pct.
Ex-Caps goaltender Kuemper played for Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon in Nashville, so we’re expecting to see Rittich in goal for the Kings on Sunday in Washington. Now in his ninth NHL season, the 32-year-old Rittich is with his fifth different NHL employer in Los Angeles. He and Kuemper have each started 16 games this season, but Rittich leads the Kings with 18 appearances in net and 10 wins.
Rittich is making just his second career start against Washington. His lone previous start against the Caps came almost exactly two years ago, on Dec. 23, 2022 when he was a member of the Winnipeg Jets. That’s the game in which Caps captain Alex Ovechkin scored twice – goals No. 801 and 802 of his NHL career – to tie and surpass Gordie Howe (801) for second place on the League’s all-time goal scoring list. Rittich gave up three goals on 26 shots in that game, a 4-1 Washington win.
All Lined Up – Here’s how we believe the Caps and the Kings might look when they take to the ice late Sunday afternoon in DC:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
88-Mangiapane, 17-Strome, 43-Wilson
24-McMichael, 80-Dubois, 21-Protas
13-Vrana, 29-Lapierre, 16-Raddysh
22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 63-Miroshnichenko
Defensemen
38-Sandin, 74-Carlson
42-Fehervary, 3-Roy
6-Chychrun, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Extras
27-Alexeyev
52-McIlrath
58-Rybinski
Out/Injured
8-Ovechkin (fractured fibula)
15-Milano (upper body)
19-Backstrom (hip)
20-Eller (illness)
77-Oshie (back)
LOS ANGELES
Forwards
15-Turcotte, 11-Kopitar, 9-Kempe
22-Fiala, 24-Danault, 14-Laferriere
37-Foegele, 55-Byfield, 10-Jeannot
7-Burroughs, 79-Helenius, 26-Thomas
Defensemen
44-Anderson, 84-Gavrikov
6-Edmundson, 92-Clarke
43-Moverare, 21-Spence
Goaltenders
31-Rittich
35-Kuemper
Extras
5-Englund
47-Lee
Out/Injured
8-Doughty (lower body)
12-Moore (upper body)
34-Kaliyev (upper body)
61-Lewis (lower body)
