Autumn Sweater – For the first time in more than 20 years, the Caps find themselves in Montreal in the month of October. Following two days of glorious weather here on Thursday and Friday, the Capitals awakened to a rainy Saturday game day here in Quebec, their first October game here since Oct. 14, 2003.
After missing the playoffs last season for the first time since 2013-14, the schedule gave Washington four straight season-opening opponents that also missed out on the postseason in 2022-23. Tonight’s game against Montreal is the last of those four games, and it’s the finale of the Caps’ first road trip of the season, too.
The Caps are seeking to even their record and hoping to head home at .500 for the season with a victory here tonight. Washington has earned at least a point in 19 of its last 21 visits here (17-2-2), dating back to Nov. 28, 2009.
Since Alex Ovechkin joined the Caps at the outset of the 2005-06 season, Washington is 19-6-3 in 28 visits to Bell Centre. The Caps lost their most recent trip here late last season, falling 6-2 to the Habs on April 6 of this year.
Ovechkin has piled up 64 career points (37 goals, 27 assists) in 55 career contests against the Canadiens, the most points by any active NHL player against Montreal. In 26 career games at Bell Centre, Ovechkin has 30 points (16 goals, 14 assists), including nine multi-point outings. He has three career hat tricks against the Habs, tied for his best against any foe; he also has a trio of hatties against Florida and Ottawa.
Wake Up Everybody – Three games is a small sample of an 82-game whole, but the Caps are urgently seeking to awaken their slumbering offense early in the 2023-24 season. The Caps have scored just three goals in 185 minutes of hockey, they’re still seeking their first power-play goal of the season, and they are – along with the St. Louis Blues – one of only two teams in the NHL that has yet to play with a lead at any point this season.
“Play with a lead, special teams, a lot of different things,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “We’ve been down in every game, and it’s never easy in this League, playing from behind. That’s where you see like in our last game [Wednesday in Ottawa], we’re in a great spot. [It’s a] 2-1 game [to start the second period], and it felt like [the first] was our best period of the season.
“And then you can see it in some of the decision-making and some of the shifts that follow to start that second period. It’s pressing, trying to tie the game. So if that game is 1-1 or 0-0, does that change our thought process a little bit? I think we’re more willing to let the game come to us if we’re not trailing in a game where you see us pressing. Which then spirals out of control, and now all of a sudden a 2-1 game turns into a game that’s out of hand.”
Not only has Washington not played with a lead, it has yet to score the game’s first or second goal; the Caps have been down by at least two goals before netting their own first lamplighter in each game. Three of the four Washington forward lines gets a remake going into tonight’s tilt with the Habs as the team seeks an offensive spark from its group of core players and its power play. Along with St. Louis and Anaheim, the Caps are one of three teams still seeking their first extra-man tally of the season.
“Face-offs; entries were a little bit better last game,” begins Carbery, when queried as to what needs to be better on the Washington power play. “And our puck play – when we do gain possession or recovery – needs to be a lot cleaner and crisper. And then it needs to be an attack mentality with the puck – get it back, do it again.”
Washington’s group of core players remaining from it’s 2017-18 Stanley Cup championship season is comprised entirely of power play pieces: Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, John Carlson, Evgeny Kuznetsov, T.J. Oshie and Tom Wilson. That group has had years of extra-man success together, but it can no longer rest on the laurels of what it has accomplished previously.
“I do think there’s something to that, but I also think there’s an evolution,” says Carbery. “And you have to reinvent yourself as a power play, and that’s probably one of the things that we’re trying to do, and there are some growing pains early with it.
“You’ve got to find some things that you do well, and if you just stick two options that you’ve done for 10 years, and you look for those two options, guess what? The other 31 teams know those two options, because they’ve seen them a few times. They’ve figured out ways to prevent those two options, so what’s your third, fourth, fifth?
“That’s what we’re challenging our power play group to come up with. We need to have three, four [options]. If they take [Ovechkin] away, what do we do? There’s a lot of different things that go into that, but it’s reinventing ourselves to do multiple things. It’s not getting away from what has made them successful and not reinventing the wheel, but finding different ways to attack and to adjust when penalty kills are on to what we’re doing.”
For The First Time – Recalled from AHL Hershey on Thursday, defenseman Hardy Haman Aktell is expected to make his NHL debut here in Montreal tonight. Originally a Nashville draft choice (fourth round, 108th overall in 2016), Haman Aktell signed with Washington as a free agent this past summer. He will become the first defenseman not drafted by the Capitals to make his NHL debut with the team in nearly a decade, since Julien Brouillette did so on Feb. 6, 2014.
At the time, Brouillette was the fifth such defenseman to debut for Washington in a span of 25 months, following in the skate steps of Tomas Kundratek (Jan. 11, 2012), Steve Oleksy (March 5, 2013), Cameron Schilling (March 12, 2013) and Nate Schmidt (Oct. 12, 2013).
After an excellent training camp with the Caps, Haman Aktell was one of the team’s final roster cuts earlier this month. He played two games with the Bears – scoring his first goal as a North American pro in the second of those contests – before getting the call to join the Caps in Montreal.
“I think it was good,” says Haman Aktell of getting a couple of games with the Bears. “I played a lot of [penalty kill] and we had two good games. It’s a quick League down there, too, so it’s good for me to get a little bit more adjusted to the smaller rink and it’s just good experience to be down there.”
Haman Aktell has played the last three seasons with Vaxjo HC of the Swedish Hockey League, winning the League championship last season and finishing second on the club in scoring (9-27-36 in 51 games).
“When I signed the contract [with Washington], I didn’t know where I was going to play, whether it was the AHL or here,” says Haman Aktell. “I’m trying to have a good mindset wherever I play. It’s just fun to be up here and play.”
Ahead of his first NHL training camp last month, Haman Aktell arrived in D.C. early, knowing that adjusting to the smaller North American rinks would take some time.
“I got here pretty early before camp to get used to the smaller rink, and I think it has gone really well,” he says. “It goes a lot quicker to the net and when you have the puck, you don’t have as much time as you have [in Sweden], but it’s still the same sport. You just have to adjust to small things and it goes pretty good.”
This past July, the Caps obtained veteran defenseman Joel Edmundson in a deal with the Canadiens. But Edmundson suffered a hand injury in a Sept. 24 preseason scrimmage and won’t be available to the Caps until next month. Lucas Johansen played two of the first three regular season games in Edmundson’s absence, and Alex Alexeyev played the other, and now Haman Atktell gets a look on that pairing with Trevor van Riemsdyk.
“We just felt like – diving into the numbers – our bottom pair has had a real tough time in the first three games,” says Carbery. “And we need some consistency there. We need something in that bottom pair that can give us reliable minutes, and that’s what we’re looking for.
“Hardy had a great camp, and we liked his exhibition games, so we thought it would be a great opportunity for him to potentially get into the lineup.”
Haman Aktell is expecting to have his girlfriend fly in from Sweden in time for tonight’s game, and his parents are expected to be joining him in Washington on Sunday after the team’s return to the District.
In The Nets – Darcy Kuemper gets the start for Washington tonight against the Canadiens, his third straight start after Charlie Lindgren started for the Caps in the season opener. Lifetime against the Habs, Kuemper is 4-3-0 in eight appearances (seven starts) with a 2.57 GAA and a .903 save pct.
For Montreal, we are expecting to see veteran Jake Allen between the pipes tonight. Lifetime against the Caps, Allen is 3-4-0 with a 3.91 GAA and an .877 save pct. in seven appearances, all starts.
All Lined Up – Here is how we believe the Capitals and Canadiens might line up for Saturday night’s game:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 43-Wilson
24-McMichael, 92-Kuznetsov, 77-Oshie
15-Milano, 19-Backstrom, 45-Phillips
47-Malenstyn, 21-Protas, 39-Mantha
Defensemen
38-Sandin, 74-Carlson
42-Fehervary, 3-Jensen
4-Haman Aktell, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
35-Kuemper
33-Stevenson
Injured
6-Edmundson (hand)
26-Dowd (upper body)
67-Pacioretty (torn Achilles’ tendon)
Scratches
27-Alexeyev
46-Johansen
MONTREAL
Forwards
22-Caufield, 14-Suzuki, 49-Harvey-Pinard
70-Pearson, 15-Newhook, 20-Slafkovsky
17-Anderson, 91-Monahan, 11-Gallagher
56-Ylonen, 71-Evans, 55-Pezzetta
Defensemen
8-Matheson, 58-Savard
52-Barron, 26-Kovacevic
72-Xhekaj, 54-Harris
Goaltenders
34-Allen
35-Montembeault
Injured
6-Wideman (back)
21-Guhle (upper body)
28-Dvorak (knee)
31-Price (knee)
77-Dach (torn ACL)
Scratches
30-Primeau
40-Armia
