Ready, Set, Glow – The Caps open up a three-game homestand tonight against the Detroit Red Wings at Capital One Arena, their last multiple-game homestand of the season. The Wings are one of half a dozen teams – clustered within just four points of one another – who are vying for the second wild card playoff berth in the Eastern Conference.
The Caps were in that bag last season, scratching and clawing for playoff positioning through the season’s final two months. This time around, the Caps own a comfortable lead in the Metro Division and Eastern Conference standings, so they’re looking to shore up their overall game and get everything in shape for the postseason.
“I think we need to keep playing our game,” says Caps forward Aliaksei Protas. “These games now are more playoff-type games, because teams are fighting for their lives and for a playoff spot and hope to get higher [in the standings], so every game now is going to be a tough one and a hard one, and that’s good preparation for the playoffs. We’ve got to be ready and play our best and translate those games to the playoffs.”
Detroit certainly qualifies as one of those teams fighting for its life.
“Last year we saw how some teams can be in a position where it's playoff games from here on out,” says Caps’ defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk. “Fortunately for us, we kind of put ourselves in a position where it doesn't quite feel that way, but I think you learn that it's hard to just flick it on once the playoffs come.
“I know in Chicago one year we won the West pretty comfortably, and then we ran into a Nashville team that had been playing playoff hockey probably for a month. I think it was a [Peter Laviolette] coached team too, and they beat us pretty good. So, it's important to focus on those details.
“We're fortunate enough where it's maybe not as high stress, but you want to put that expectation on yourself to still come out and perform right away. I know our starts have been a little inconsistent, and come playoff time, that's all it takes. When things are a little tighter, you start slow, and you go down a couple [goals]. We've been fortunate; our third periods have been awesome. But come playoff time, it cuts that much tighter and you don’t want to be chasing too many games.”
One Wing – The Caps’ lone addition at the trade deadline was forward Anthony Beauvillier, who joined the team at practice on March 8 and made his debut with the team on March 9 against Seattle in its last home game ahead of the California trip.
Out in the Golden State last week, Beauvillier got on the scoresheet with an important insurance goal – a swipe and snipe breakaway tally – late in the third period a week ago tonight.
Tonight, Beauvillier skates in his fifth game in a Washington sweater, but Caps coach Spencer Carbery likes what he has seen so far.
“I’ve liked his game a lot,” says Carbery. “He has fit in really well, just first of all, locker room wise, his personality integrating into the group. I feel like that has been completely seamless. And so that starts there.
“And his game, I've really appreciated. He's fit in really well on [Nic] Dowd's line. I think he adds a little bit more pace to our lineup; he can really scoot. He plays with a ton of energy. He is of those high motor guys that's constantly – whether we have the puck or we don't have the puck – moving his feet, and he provides pace, and he goes to some hard areas. He's a foreheck guy, he'll get to the net front for being a smaller in stature guy.
“There's a lot of things that I've liked about his game, and I think we're just scratching the surface with what he's doing inside of our lineup right now. We're just trying to get him up to speed playing with Dowder, and now I can see his role growing a little bit, whether that's a little bit of added special teams or playing potentially in some different situations with some different lines.”
Prior to Beauvillier’s arrival in DC, Carbery noted that the former Islander would start his Caps career playing with Dowd and Brandon Duhaime, mentioning the duo’s tendency to communicate as being a positive in trying to integrate a new player into the room and the lineup in the final quarter of the season.
“I think he has played really well in a really tough situation,” says Dowd of his new linemate. “To be the only [addition] on a good team, and then to come into a team that’s playing really well – and I consider us a really, really tight group – that’s got to be hard, right, at the end of the year?
“I’ve never done that, and that’s got to be really challenging for guys and he has done really well. From a personal standpoint, I think it helps that there’s another French-speaking guy on the team; I know him and [P-L Dubois] get along pretty well and they’re sitting by each other on the plane and speaking French and I think that helps. But also, I think he has played really well.
“Any system at this point of the year is difficult to learn. Guys are playing at such a high level, and it’s not like there’s any mistakes being made in the systems generally.”
Carbery’s choice to put Beauvillier with Dowd and Duhaime can be seen as an indication that those two adhere to and embody the system to the point where they’re best suited to break in a new teammate, but Dowd doesn’t necessarily see it that way.
“I think he seemed like a good fit for our line, and maybe that’s as far as it goes and they wanted to see how it would work,” he says. “I also think that Dewey and I are pretty simple players to play with. If he is going to have to deal with all this external stuff and dealing with systems and all this, I would view us as two guys who are predictable and easy to play with, and he can figure the systems out as he plays with us. And maybe us being simple hockey players helps him out.”
Just The Motion – Detroit comes into town with the NHL’s third-ranked power play unit, but it’s also the top-ranked extra-man unit in the Eastern Conference with a success rate of 28.3 percent. In two games against the Caps this season, the Wings have struck for a power-play goal in each; they are 2-for-7 (28.6 percent) against Washington this season.
In nearly a quarter (16 of 67) of its games this season, Detroit as delivered multiple lamplighters on the power play. The Wings’ longest power play dry spell this season is a four-game stretch from Dec. 7-14 in which they went 0-for-8 with the extra man.
What makes the Wings’ power play so good and so prolific?
“When you look at building power plays and the weapons that they have and the skill sets, they’re becoming one of the great power plays in this League,” says Carbery. “They are this year and they’ve been rolling at a crazy percentage, if you take out maybe the first couple of months of the season.
“When I evaluate power plays like Tampa, Toronto, ours from years ago, it’s the complements of the skill sets from all the guys. So now they’ve got the big shot up top [in Moritz Seider], which we saw in our game [here on March 7]. So you have to respect Seider’s one-timer up there, and you can’t just play on those low four guys. So, there’s number one; they have a legitimate shot threat up top.
“And then you’ve got the movement – which goes without saying – and their ability to interchange, and that is also [challenging]. But then they’ve got Patrick Kane, who I think is playing at an extremely high level. Now you’ve got a facilitator with a bomb of a one-timer in [Alex] DeBrincat. The hands match over there with their down low play into the bumper.
“Yeah, they can beat you in a bunch of different ways. And when I say ‘beat you,’ they attack you from a bunch of different spots where you can’t sit on one or two options; you’ve got to respect four options. And even Kane as a shooter; I want to say he scored on us last year from the elbow. Maybe that was 5-on-5, but he can still swing it as well.
“You have to respect a lot of different attack options that they’ve got on that power play, and they are playing with a ton of confidence right now.”
Eleven nights ago, the Caps were able to erode some of that confidence, even though they did give up a power-play goal. When the Wings were here March 7, they opened up a 2-0 lead on Seider’s power-play play at the seven-minute mark of the first period, a center point shot through traffic. The Caps came back with five unanswered goals – including two shorthanded goals against the vaunted Detroit power play in the front half of the third period – to win 5-2.
In The Nets – Three days after notching his 29th victory of the season with a 19-save performance against the Sharks in San Jose, Logan Thompson gets a second straight starting assignment for Washington tonight against the Red Wings. With a 17-2-2 mark in his last 21 starts, Thompson seeks to nail down the first 30-win season of his NHL career tonight.
Lifetime against the Red Wings, Thompson is 1-1-0 in two appearances, both starts, with a 3.04 GAA and an .872 save pct.
Weeks into his second tour of duty with Detroit, Petr Mrazek is currently atop the three-goaltender depth chart for the Red Wings. Obtained from Chicago ahead of the trade deadline, Mrazek returned to the team that drafted him in the fifth round of the 2010 NHL Draft.
With the beleaguered Blackhawks this season, Mrazek was 10-19-2 in 33 starts, with a 3.46 GAA and an .890 save pct. He has started each of Detroit’s last three games, helping the Wings snap a six-game slide in the first game of his second go-round in Motown. In starting three straight games, Mrazek is 2-1-0 with a shutout, a 2.01 GAA and a .920 save pct. He is coming into tonight’s game on the heels of an 18-save shutout over Vegas on Sunday, his first whitewash since Dec. 7, 2023 when he made 37 saves in a 1-0 win over Anaheim during his days as a Blackhawk.
Lifetime against the Capitals, Mrazek is 5-9-2 in 16 appearances (15 starts) with a shutout, a 3.09 GAA and an .898 save pct.
In Mrazek’s lone career shutout against Washington – on Nov. 10, 2015 at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena – he made 38 saves, with 15 of those coming off the stick of Caps’ captain Alex Ovechkin; that was the second time Ovechkin registered 15 shots on net in a game, still his single-game career high.
Just over seven years later, on Dec. 13, 2022 in Chicago, Ovechkin rang up a hat trick against Mrazek and the Hawks in a 7-3 Washington win. Ovechkin scored three goals on five shots in that game.
All Lined Up – Here’s how we believe the Capitals and the Red Wings might look on Tuesday night in DC:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin 17-Strome, 43-Wilson
24-McMichael, 80-Dubois, 21-Protas
88-Mangiapane, 20-Eller, 16-Raddysh
22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 72-Beauvillier
Defensemen
38-Sandin, 74-Carlson
6-Chychrun, 57-van Riemsdyk
42-Fehervary, 3-Roy
Goaltenders
79-Lindgren
48-Thompson
Extras
27-Alexeyev
52-McIlrath
53-Frank
Out/Injured
15-Milano (upper body)
19-Backstrom (hip)
77-Oshie (back)
DETROIT
Forwards
85-Soderblom, 71-Larkin, 23-Raymond
93-DeBrincat, 92-Kasper, 88-Kane
48-Berggren, 37-Compher 11-Tarasenko
14-Motte, 27-Rasmussen, 15-Smith
Defensemen
8-Chiarot, 53-Seider
77-Edvinsson, 20-Johansson
56-Gustafsson, 3-Holl
Goaltenders
43-Mrazek
39-Talbot
Extras
34-Lyon
50-Shine
84-Lagesson
Out/Injured
18-Copp (upper body)
43-Mazur (upper body)
46-Petry (undisclosed)
