Jan. 10 vs. Montreal Canadiens at Capital One Arena
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps Radio 24/7
Montreal Canadiens (19-18-3)
Washington Capitals (27-10-4)
The Caps conclude a quick two-game homestand on Friday night when they meet up with the Montreal Canadiens for the third and final time this season. Friday’s game also starts a weekend set of back-to-back games for Washington. The Caps will be on the move to Music City immediately after taking on the Canadiens; they’ve got a Saturday night date with the Predators in Nashville.
Washington’s current two-game homestand straddles the midpoint of the 2024-25 season. The Caps finished up the first half on Wednesday night when they eked out a 2-1 overtime victory over the Vancouver Canucks.
P-L Dubois scored both Washington goals and Logan Thompson (17-2-2) made 30 saves – including 20 in the second period – to lift the Caps past the Canucks. It was not a pretty victory by any stretch; the Caps and Canucks played cantankerous hockey where time and space were more mirage than reality and pucks seemed to move like they were manhole covers.
Wednesday’s game marked the Caps’ third 2-1 overtime decision since the beginning of December – each of them featuring just a single goal scored at 5-on-5 – and they’ve won two of the three. Washington managed just 18 shots on net in the win over the Canucks, generating only two shots in the third period, but squeezing off five in overtime with the Dubois game-winner coming at 4:19 of the extra session.
“Dubie was a beast tonight; he was really good,” assessed Caps coach Spencer Carbery after Wednesday’s game. “I liked their line for the most part.
“It was tight. It’s hard to evaluate in this moment; I’ll have to go back through it and that. But it was hard fought out there. There wasn’t a lot of space, so there’s not a lot of things that are jumping off the page when you watch that game. It’s just moving pucks north, [in the offensive] zone, seeing if you can get a puck into the net area, if you can win a puck battle. That’s what tonight was about; wall play was a huge factor in tonight’s game. We found a way through it, so I’m proud of our guys for battling through that game tonight.”
It’s all about the points, and the Caps picked up two more of them to improve to 7-0-2 in their last nine home games and 3-0-2 in their last five. It’s been more than three weeks now since the Caps last stacked up as many as three straight wins – their longest drought of its kind this season – but they’re a respectable 6-4-2 in a dozen games since their four-game winning streak ended in mid-December. They’ve managed to keep a consistent and steady stream of points coming in as they try to get their offense going once again.
In the meantime, they’ve found a way to subsist on special teams, sturdy defense, and great goaltending. Over those last dozen games, the Caps rank eighth in power play efficiency (26.7 percent), 12th in penalty-killing (82.4 percent) and tied for fifth in goals against per game (2.50). Those strong elements of their game have enabled them to overcome a dearth of scoring over that span; with 2.92 goals per game in their last dozen contests, the Caps rank 16th in the circuit.
“We’ve got to get back to it,” says Carbery. “We’re still fighting it a bit. Tonight was a good example. This felt a little bit like we knew it wasn’t going to be pretty, and we were going to have to keep them to one or zero [goals]. And I haven’t felt that a lot this year, because we were scoring so often early in the year, we’ve always kind of had that mindset – and you can feel it on the bench – of ‘we’ll score our way back into a game.’
“Tonight, I felt like guys understood that we may need to keep this at one or zero [goals against]. And we’re going to have to buckle down and make sure that we’re not loose and we’re not giving them any free opportunities, but protecting the net, doing a job in shot lanes, making sure that we’re winning puck battles down low, and we did that. We were committed to that, and we can carry that over; we’ll take some of the positives over.”
The Caps will have to carry those positives over if they hope to overcome the Habs, who’ve heated up significantly in the month since the previous meeting between the two teams in Montreal. During the Caps’ 6-4-2 stretch, Montreal’s 8-2-0 mark is the second-best record in the NHL, and its rate of 3.90 goals per game is tops in the circuit.
Saddled with an 8-13-3 record in the aftermath of a 6-3 loss at Boston on Dec. 1, the Canadiens have shaken off that rugged start to the season, and they’ve shown some upward mobility in the standings of late, putting together a strong 11-5-0 surge since the setback to the Bruins. The Caps handed the Canadiens one of those five losses, prevailing by a 4-2 count at Bell Centre on Dec. 7.
The well-rested Habs have been idle since Monday when they won a 5-4 overtime decision over Vancouver in Montreal. The victory over the Canucks was the Canadiens’ fifth in their last six games; their hot spell has lifted them to within a single point of the final Eastern Conference playoff berth going into Thursday night’s slate of NHL activity.
Friday’s game is also the front end of a set of back-to-backs for Montreal, which returns home to host the Dallas Stars on Saturday night.
