Waiting For Columbus – The Caps finish up a three-game homestand and kick off a weekend set of Metro Division back-to-backs late Saturday afternoon when they host the Columbus Blue Jackets at Capital One Arena. The Caps carry a five-game home winning streak – their longest in five years – into Saturday’s tilt with the Jackets.
After their three-goal third-period outburst snapped a 3-3 tie and lifted them to a 6-3 victory over the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday night, the Caps were given a surprise day off on Friday, ahead of their busy weekend slate.
Against the Jackets today, Washington will make one lineup change; Hendrix Lapierre slots back into the middle of a line between Jakub Vrana and Andrew Mangiapane. Lapierre sat out each of the first two games of the homestand while Mike Sgarbossa manned the middle of that line.
“Speed, compete; go out and play,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery, when queried as to what he hopes to see from Lapierre in his return to the lineup today. “I’m not too concerned with anything structurally, I just want him to go out there and work, [be] heavy on the puck, use his speed when he can, and give us good, reliable minutes.”
Columbus drubbed Edmonton 6-1 on Monday and blanked the Islanders on Wednesday before running into the buzzsaw that is the 2024-25 Winnipeg Jets on Friday in the finale of its own three-game homestand, and suffering a 6-2 loss. The Jackets have been a swift-starting team this season; they’ve yielded only five first-period goals in 10 games, and the Jets’ Nikolaj Ehlers scored two of those five last night.
“Our start is going to be really important, especially with them coming on a back-to-back, and us taking the day off [on Friday] to rest and recuperate,” says Carbery. “So it cannot be a sluggish start for us tonight, because sometimes you get these teams on the back-to-back, and yeah, I know that they didn't have success last night against Winnipeg, but they just get right back into playing mode. And we've been off for whatever it is, 36 hours, and then it takes us a little bit to get the engines back up and running. That we will be guarding against, and making sure that we're starting on time today.”
Like the Caps, the Jackets have played only three road games to this point of the season. Columbus starts a stretch of five straight road games today in Washington.
“They compete really hard, which is to be expected, if you know [Jackets’ coach Dean Evason],” says Carbery of the Jackets. “They work. They’ve changed some systems, so that potentially has helped them. But I like a lot of their young players that they have in there that are producing for them.
“And to me, the thing that separates them is those three – and you could argue four – defensemen on the back end that cause a lot of issues for teams: [Ivan] Provorov, [Zach] Werenski, especially; and I group [Damon] Severson in there because he moves really well laterally as well. Those guys – whether it’s off the rush or in [defensive] zone coverage – if you don’t do a good job with your sorts, and if you don’t do a good job of closing under control, they can rally cause issues for you in multiple ways.
“That is something that we need to be aware of, and a reason why they’ve had a lot of success.”
Anytime You Call – With blueliners Matt Roy and Jakob Chychrun still working their way back from injury, the Caps are down to six healthy defensemen on the roster. And with a set of weekend back-to-back games – and a quick trip to Carolina for a Sunday game with the Hurricanes – looming, the Caps made a Saturday morning roster move.
Chychrun was placed on IR – retroactive to Oct. 29 – and Washington summoned defenseman Vincent Iorio from AHL Hershey. Iorio, Washington’s second-round choice (55th overall) in the 2021 NHL Draft.
The 21-year-old Iorio has seen duty with Washington in each of the last two seasons, picking an assist in nine games and also appearing in a Stanley Cup playoff contest with the Caps this past spring. Iorio has a goal and three points and is a plus-3 in nine games with Hershey this season.
Time Changes Everything – Thursday’s 6-3 win over the Canadiens in the middle match of the Caps’ three-game homestand marked Washington’s fifth consecutive victory at Capital One Arena. After dropping their season opener to the Devils here on Oct. 12, the Caps haven’t fallen at home since.
The Caps’ current home spree began less than three weeks ago; it started with an Oct. 14 victory over Vegas. Washington hadn’t won as many as five straight home games in nearly five years, since Oct. 16-Nov. 9, 2019.
The last time the Caps won five straight home games, those contests were played in a span of 24 days, scattered over three separate homestands, and with the team’s longest road trip of the season mixed in. Three-plus weeks can encompass a momentous stretch for an NHL club, and five years absolutely is a long time. With that in mind, here are some fun facts relating to the Capitals’ most recent five-game home winning streak, achieved just under five years ago.
Those 2019-20 Caps dropped their first three home games of the season (0-1-2) for the first time since 1983-84 (0-3-0), finally getting their first win with a 4-3 comeback win over Toronto in which Jakub Vrana, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Nicklas Backstrom and John Carlson supplied the offense. Some things never change – Carlson played 28:05 that night.
Two nights later, the Caps won the homestand finale before a lengthy road trip, a 5-2 win over the Rangers in Michal Kempny’s first game back after missing seven months because of surgery and subsequent rehab on a torn hamstring. The Friday night sellout crowd went wild when Kempny scored late in the first, and T.J. Oshie’s two goals propelled the Caps to a rousing win – Braden Holtby over Henrik Lundqvist – as they took to the road.
The subsequent five-game trip was a huge success; the Caps went 4-0-1 on the trip. In Calgary on the second game of the trip, Carlson scored twice in a 5-3 win, opening and closing the scoring for the Caps with his seventh multi-point game in just 11 games to start the season. By the time he got home from that trip, Carlson had eight multi-point games in October, finishing the month with seven goals and 23 points in 14 games.
Carlson played his 700th career NHL game in the only loss on the journey, a 4-3 overtime setback in Edmonton.
In the penultimate game of the trip on Oct. 25 in Vancouver, the Caps and Canucks hooked up in a wild one. Down 5-1 late in the second period, the Caps roared back with four unanswered goals – on five shots, in a span of 7:42 of playing time -- to force overtime, and then a shootout. Kuznetsov’s goal – on Washington’s first shot on net in more than 10 minutes – sparked the rally with three-tenths of a second remaining in the middle period. Lars Eller’s shorty and two goals in less than three minutes from Kempny tied it; Backstrom beat his buddy Jacob Markstrom to give the Caps a most improbable 6-5 shootout win.
Carlson and Alex Ovechkin scored twice each in the trip finale in Toronto, Ovechkin tying it in the third and winning it on a power play in overtime. Carlson and Ovechkin combined for 17 shots on net, more than half of Washington’s total of 33. Ovechkin had four points and Backstrom three assists on the night.
A two-game homestand awaited the Caps. On Nov. 1, they blasted Buffalo 6-1, cooling the 9-2-2 Sabres. Vrana scored two of the Caps’ four first-period goals, and Kempny had three assists.
Two nights later, the Caps hosted the Calgary Flames as well as the newly minted World Series champion Washington Nationals. The 4-2 win over the Flames was fun – Vrana’s first career hat trick led the way – but feting the Nationals provided plenty of entertainment as well.
The Nats hung out with the Caps before the game and read off the starting lineups, partied with the Caps after, posed for an epic pregame photo of the two teams together on the ice, rode the Olympia ice resurfacer – sans shirts – between the second and third period, and generally lived the grand and celebratory life of newly crowned world champs.
On Nov. 7, the Caps made a one-game trip to South Florida to take on the Panthers. There, they turned a 3-1 deficit into a 5-4 overtime victory behind two goals each from Ovechkin and Wilson. Wilson tied it in the first minute of the third and won it in the first minute of overtime.
Washington returned home and won its fifth straight home game on Nov. 9 against Vegas, 5-2. Backstrom scored twice in the third period to salt that game away.
Ovechkin, Carlson, Wilson and Vrana all had plenty of impact on the previous five-game home winning streak, and the quartet of 2018 Cup champs has had its collective handprints all over the current streak, too.
Also sparking the current streak are a pair of younger Caps who were drafted in Vancouver a couple of months ahead of the start of that streak, Connor McMichael and Aliaksei Protas.
Time marches on.
In The Nets – Seeking his fifth win in as many starts, Logan Thompson gets the net for Washington tonight. Thompson is 4-0-0 with a 3.21 GAA and an .876 save pct. In his four starts to date this season, Thompson has yielded just one goal that put the Caps behind on the scoreboard, and that was an Erik Haula tally at 4:45 of the first period on Oct. 19 in New Jersey, a goal that gave the Devils a 1-0 lead. That lead was erased with a Tom Wilson goal 76 seconds later.
Lifetime against the Blue Jackets, Thompson is 1-1-0 in three appearances (two starts), with a 3.46 GAA and an .892 save pct.
Elvis Merzlikins started and went the distance in Friday night’s home ice loss to Winnipeg, so Daniil Tarasov gets the starting assignment in Washington, in the back half of the Jackets’ first set of back-to-backs this season. The two Columbus netminders have split the starts thus far this season, and Tarasov enters tonight’s game at 3-1-1 in five starts on the season, with a 3.42 GAA and an .886 save pct.
In two career appearances – both starts – against the Capitals, Tarasov is 1-1-0 with a 3.94 GAA and an .882 save pct.
All Lined Up – Here’s how we expect the Capitals and Blue Jackets to look when they take the ice in the District late Saturday afternoon:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
21-Protas, 17-Strome, 8-Ovechkin
24-McMichael, 80-Dubois, 43-Wilson
13-Vrana, 29-Lapierre, 88-Mangiapane
22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 16-Raddysh
Defensemen
42-Fehervary, 74-Carlson
27-Alexeyev, 57-van Riemsdyk
38-Sandin, 52-McIlrath
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Extras
2-Iorio
15-Milano
23-Sgarbossa
Out/Injured
3-Roy (lower body)
6-Chychrun (upper body)
19-Backstrom (hip)
77-Oshie (back)
COLUMBUS
Forwards
59-Chinakhov, 23-Monahan, 86-Marchenko
4-Sillinger, 19-Fantilli, 82-Pyyhtia
27-Aston-Reese, 17-Danforth, 24-Olivier
10-Voronkov, 7-Kuraly, 62-Labanc
Defensemen
8-Werenski, 9-Provorov
2-Christiansen, 78-Severson
3-J. Johnson, 55-Jiricek
Goaltenders
40-Tarasov
90-Merzlikins
Extras
21-J. van Riemsdyk
22-Harris
Out/Injured
38-Jenner (upper body)
44-Gudbranson (upper body)
45-Brindley (finger)
91-K. Johnson (upper body)
