Things Got To Get A Little Bit Salty – Almost three years after they played in Washington state for the first time in their first ever game against the Seattle Kraken, the Caps break the seal on another state when they face the Utah Hockey Club in Salt Lake City’s Delta Center tonight. Utah becomes the 24th state in which Washington has played regular season NHL hockey.
The Caps are playing their third road game in four nights, and they’re seeking a sweep of the tour after prevailing over Colorado on Friday and Vegas on Sunday, both by identical 5-2 scores.
“We’re going to have to dig deep and find a way against a good hockey team in their building,” says Caps’ coach Spencer Carbery. “We’ve heard about this team and the home crowd and the type of energy they can feed off, so we’re going to need to muster up and dig in today to put our best foot forward.”
Washington is also finishing a set of back-to-back games for the third consecutive weekend. The Caps took a 5-2 decision from the Golden Knights in Vegas on Sunday, but most of the game was played at 5-on-5, and Washington never trailed in the game, so none of the Caps had to take on a lot of minutes.
“I think guys have become pretty aware of the fact that around the League, there are tons of teams that are winning games on back-to-backs, and playing well,” says Carbery. “You just have to manage the game, and be smart, and [monitor] shift length and all that different stuff when you’re playing against a rested team, there is not a doubt. But it’s not an insurmountable achievement to play well in a back-to-back against a rested team. You’ve got to manage the game, and there’s little things inside of your shifts that you can do to set yourself up for success in those situations.”
Washington is likely to roll out the same lineup it deployed in Sunday’s victory in Vegas, but Carbery did allude to the possibility of late change[s].
“We’ve got a couple of things through warm-ups that we’re working with,” he says.
Transition Mission – Seventeen games into last season, the Caps sported a very respectable 10-5-2 record, but a peek under the hood revealed some smoke and mirrors. Washington was averaging a meager 2.41 goals per game, ranking 31st in the League in that department. With two goals and 25 points of offense from their blueline (1.47 points per game), the Caps were headed to one of their worst seasons in recent memory for offense from the back end. The Caps’ power play was last in the NHL with an anemic conversion rate of 6 percent, and they had a goal differential of minus-7. On the positive front, Washington was eighth in the NHL in goals against, yielding an average of 2.82 per game.
Fast forward almost a year, and this year’s model is a vastly different group. The Caps are once again yielding 2.82 goals per game – just as they were at this stage last season – and that places them 10th in the League this time around. And that’s where the similarities end.
Washington leads the NHL with an average of 4.24 goals per game. The Caps have scored four or more goals in 10 of their first 17 games this season, and their plus-24 goal differential is third in the League. Although the power play got off to a very slow start once again this season, the Caps’ 5-on-5 excellence mitigated that issue, and the extra-man unit is now rounding into shape as well. Washington has scored on four of its last six extra-man opportunities over the last four games, climbing to 15.4 percent on the season, ranking 27th.
Simply put, the Caps feature a deeper, more diverse and more robust offensive attack this season. They’ve made it their mission to be around the net, but recently they’ve also displayed a dangerous transition game. And the word is getting around.
The Caps scored twice in transition in each of the first two games of this trip, and Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy gave Washington its props for exactly that in the aftermath of Sunday’s game.
“They do it well, they transition – one of the best in the League,” said Cassidy. “The analytics showed that, and we talked about it, they’re a good transition team with the way they play through the neutral zone. But you get on the ice and you play, and sometimes it happens. We wouldn’t be the first team to fall in that trap against them. They do it well.”
On Friday in Denver, Connor McMichael scored on a swipe and snipe deep in Avalanche ice. He forced a turnover and scored directly off of it, shortening the ice significantly. Later in the game, P-L Dubois made a boss defensive play at the Washington line that resulted in a critical Jakob Chychrun goal.
“We talked about a little bit this morning,” said Dubois after the game in Denver. “No line in the NHL wants to defend. And sometimes the best way to defend is to play in the offensive zone and hold onto pucks. If you're 40 seconds in their zone, they're probably not going to come attack on you, and it's easier said than done.”
Two nights later in Vegas, Dylan Strome stripped Vegas forward Alexander Holtz as he was skating the puck out of his own end, again shortening the ice, and then finding Chychrun for an important goal. Late in the second period with the Caps nursing a one-goal lead, Matt Roy made a good read to pick off a Jack Eichel pass in Washington ice, and Roy quickly created a 2-on-1 with Alex Ovechkin, leading to the captain’s second goal in what would be a hat trick performance.
“Well, our [defensemen] are jumping into the play,” notes Strome. “I think [Chychrun] has four of the exact same goals where the third guy hits the trailer and he just rifles it over the glove. So he's jumping into the play and then making great plays.
“And I think all our [defensemen] are really jumping in the play. Maybe before, it might have been just a 3-on-2 or a 3-on-3, and we're making it into a 4-on-3. Now we're a 4-on-2, and when you’ve got such good skaters as [defensemen], and they're jumping in the play and they're feeling good, feeling confident. We know if they miss a shot, we're going to have to work back. But they're jumping in the play, doing the right things. And it's fun to watch, and fun to play.”
Strome touched on another major difference right there. Washington’s blueline corps has contributed 10 goals and 48 points thus far. That’s five times as many goals and nearly double the total of points from the back end as at the same juncture of last season. The Caps are getting 2.82 points per game from their defense; only Winnipeg (three points per game) and Colorado (2.83) rank higher.
The last time the Caps went through a season with a higher rate of contribution from their defensemen was 1992-93 when they became the first – and still the only – NHL team ever to have three 20-goal scorers. The ’92-93 Caps got an average of 3.14 goals per game over the course of an 84-game season.
In The Nets – Charlie Lindgren gets the net for Washington tonight in Utah. Lindgren is coming off a 17-save performance that led to his fourth victory of the season on Friday night in Denver.
In the official game notes for today’s game, we see lifetime stats for the Utah Hockey Club against Washington, but it’s not a two-way street; there are no lifetime stats for any of the Caps against Utah, because the NHL has designated them as some sort of magical expansion team despite never actually conducting an expansion draft.
Nevertheless, other more reality-driven sources tell us that Lindgren has faced the team formerly known as the Arizona Coyotes on three occasions, starting against them twice. He carries an 0-2-0 lifetime record against this entity, with a 4.44 GAA and an .852 save pct.
Connor Ingram is the expected starter for Utah. Originally drafted by Tampa Bay in the third round of the 2016 NHL Draft, Ingram broke in with Nashville in 2021-22 but 89 of his 92 career appearances in the League have come with the Arizona/Utah squads. Ingram won a career high 23 games last season, tying for the League lead with six shutouts as well. This season, he is 6-3-3 in a dozen starts with a 3.40 GAA and an .879 save pct.
In his lone career start against the Capitals – on Dec. 4 of last year at Mullett Arena – Ingram blanked them on 26 shots in a 6-0 shutout win for Arizona.
All Lined Up – Here’s how we believe the Capitals and the Utah Hockey Club might look when they take the ice on Monday night in Salt Lake City:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 21-Protas
24-McMichael, 80-Dubois, 43-Wilson
88-Mangiapane 20-Eller, 13-Vrana
22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 16-Raddysh
Defensemen
6-Chychrun, 74-Carlson
38-Sandin, 3-Roy
42-Fehervary, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
79-Lindgren
48-Thompson
Extras
27-Alexeyev
29-Lapierre
52-McIlrath
Out/Injured
15-Milano (upper body)
19-Backstrom (hip)
77-Oshie (back)
UTAH
Forwards
9-Keller, 17-Bjugstad, 8-Schmaltz
15-Kerfoot, 27-Hayton, 67-Crouse
63-Maccelli, 92-Cooley, 11-Guenther
22-McBain, 82-Stenlund, 53-Carcone
Defensemen
98-Sergachev, 2-Maatta
4-Valimaki, 5-Kesselring
28-Cole, 10-Lamoureux
Goaltenders
39-Ingram
70-Vejmelka
Extras
38-O’Brien
41-Bortuzzo
52-Kolyachonok
Out/Injured
6-Marino (upper body)
50-Durzi (upper body)
