Tighter, Tighter – With a baker’s dozen of games remaining on their regular season slate, the Caps head into a tough three-game stretch when they host the Florida Panthers today in the finale of a three-game homestand. This week, the Caps will take to the road on a two-game trip in which they’ll visit Winnipeg and Minnesota, respectively.
Washington’s next three opponents all rank among the NHL’s stingiest teams at 5-on-5; Winnipeg has yielded only 103 goals at 5-on-5 in its 70 games this season, fewest in the League. The Jets are followed on that list by Los Angeles (105), Calgary (114) and then Florida and Minnesota (117), tied for fourth. Washington is sixth with 118.
The Caps fell 3-1 to Calgary here on Feb. 25 and came up empty in a 3-0 loss to the Kings in Los Angeles on March 13, and now they’re set to go up against each of the circuit’s other top five teams in that department in their next five games.
And over the shorter term, Florida is the most miserly team in the League at 5-on-5. In a dozen games since the NHL returned to play from its 4 Nations Face-Off break, Florida has surrendered only 14 goals against at 5-on-5, fewest in the NHL.
“I think what separates them, and why I think they're the best defending team in the league, is they protect the net front and the slot better than anybody in the NHL, for my money,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery of the Panthers. “And that's partly the way that their structure is – so, the system – but also the commitment to win your 1-on-1 [battles] and protect that area is elite, elite, elite.
“And that's where they make it challenging, and that'll be our challenge tonight, is how many of those 1-on-1 situations can we win? And that's what it's going to come down to, them against us, us against them. Can we fight our way to the inside? [Can we] win some pucks in there, win a box out situation? Because they make it extremely difficult to do that, and that's the task at hand. And if we expect to have any success against them today, it's going to be because of that, because we win those 1-on-1 situations to the inside of the rink, the toughest part of the ice rink today.”
When The Whip Comes Down – For three seasons now, Caps center Dylan Strome has had his locker stall next to that of Tom Wilson at the team’s MedStar Capitals Iceplex practice facility in Arlington. So it was no surprise to hear Strome sing the praises of his teammate when Wilson cracked the 30-goal plateau for the first time in his 12-year NHL career on Tuesday vs. Detroit.
“He is one of the premier players in the League,” says Strome. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. He kills penalties, plays on the power play, plays physical, great teammate, great guy to have around the room. He can really do it all.
“[It’s] well-earned. He goes to the net, he scores on the power play, he’s scored a [shorthanded goal] this year. He has found ways to do it all, and he is a guy you love to have on your team and hate to play against. I think that’s the best way to describe him.”
Wilson became just the third player in NHL history to join the 30-goal club after playing in his 800th game, which he did earlier this season.
Detroit’s Alex Delvecchio – a Hockey Hall of Famer – was the first to do so; Gordie Howe’s longtime pivot notched his first 30-goal season in 1965-66, scoring 31 goals at the age of 33. Delvecchio’s NHL career lasted 24 seasons, and he scored 456 career goals, but ’65-66 was his only 30-goal season. He had played 951 of his eventual career total of 1,550 games when he scored his 30th of the season in 1965-66.
Forty seasons later, the well-traveled Mike Sillinger recorded his first 30-goal season at the age of 34. While Delvecchio spent his entire 24-year NHL career in Motown, Sillinger kept Rand McNally in business in the pre-GPS days; he toiled for a dozen different teams in his 17 NHL seasons, skating for multiple squads in eight of those campaigns. Sillinger split the 2005-06 season between St. Louis and Nashville, scoring 22 goals with the Blues and 10 with the Predators.
Wilson joins Chris Clark (30 goals in 2006-07 at age 30) and T.J. Oshie (33 goals in 2016-17 at age 30) as the third member of the Capitals to have their first career 30-goal season at 30 or older.
And to further Strome’s points on Wilson, the Washington winger is just the 10th player aged 30 or older in NHL history to score 30 goals, record 70 or more PIM, score 10 or more power-play goals and score multiple shorthanded goals in the same season.
That group includes seven Hockey Hall of Famers, most notably Darryl Sittler, the only player to do it twice (1980-81 and 1981-82). The others: Phil Esposito (1972-73), Mark Messier (1991-92), Dave Andreychuk (1993-94), Doug Gilmour (1995-96), Brendan Shanahan (2001-02) and Mats Sundin (2001-02).
In addition to Wilson, the non-Hockey Hall of Famers – as of yet, anyway – to turn the trick are ex-Cap Mike Knuble (2005-06) and Brad Marchand (2018-19).
In The Nets – In Tuesday’s homestand opener against Detroit, Logan Thompson became the fifth goaltender in franchise history to record a 30-win season. Olie Kolzig and Braden Holtby did it five times each, Jose Theodore did it twice, and Jim Carey – who was the first ever to do it, in his Vezina Trophy season of 1995-96 – did it once.
Thompson is fourth in the NHL with 30 wins (30-4-5) and each of the three goaltenders ahead of him has started at least 11 more games than him. He is 18-2-2 in his last 22 starts.
Lifetime against Florida, Thompson is 3-1-0 with a 2.76 GAA and a .913 save pct. in four appearances, all starts.
For the Panthers – who are starting a set of back-to-back games tonight – old friend Vitek Vanecek is the expected starter. The Caps drafted Vanecek in the second round of the 2014 NHL Draft, and he earned the first 41 of his 93 career NHL victors with Washington.
Vanecek came to the Panthers from San Jose in a trade deadline deal, and he is 1-1-0 with a shutout, a 1.53 GAA and a .944 save pct. in his two starts with Florida since the swap.
Lifetime against the Capitals, he is 1-1-0 in four appearances – two starts – with a 2.82 GAA and a .905 save pct.
All Lined Up – Here’s how we believe the Capitals and the Panthers might look on Saturday afternoon 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)
FLORIDA
Forwards
23-Verhaeghe, 16-Barkov, 13-Reinhart
25-Samoskevich, 9-Bennett, 17-Rodrigues
27-Luostarainen, 15-Lundell, 70-J. Boqvist
10-Greer, 8-Sturm, 12-Gadjovich
Defensemen
42-Forsling, 3-Jones
77-Mikkola, 2-Bjornfot
26-Balinskis, 88-Schmidt
Goaltenders
72-Bobrovsky
41-Vanecek
Extras
92-Nosek
Out/Injured
5-Ekblad (NHL suspension)
7-Kulikov (upper body)
19-Tkachuk (lower body)
63-Marchand (upper body)
