Unmasked: Rare right-catching combo of Lindgren, Thompson not hurting Capitals shooters

Charlie Lindgren is 31 years old and in his 10th season of professional hockey and never had a playing partner who also catches with his right hand before the Washington Capitals traded for fellow right-catching goalie Logan Thompson on June 29.

“I really can’t remember throughout my whole journey another goalie partner being a full-right,” Lindgren said. “So obviously this year has been extremely unique in that sense.”

Steve Mason and Mathieu Garon were the last two full-right goalies to play together for a full season, playing all 82 games for the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2009-10 and being in the lineup together for 78 games in 2010-11.

Columbus averaged 2.59 goals per game during those two seasons, 23rd among the 30 teams, and there was some thought that shooting on right-catching goalies in practice negatively affected the players in games when they faced the more-prevalent left-catching goalies.

The theory being shooters grow up facing mostly left-catching goalies and develop natural instincts about the best place to shoot on them relative to their handedness -- high glove and low blocker being most common -- so having the blocker and glove on the opposite hand forces an adjustment.

Some believe it’s an advantage for right-catching goalies, but if a team only shoots on righty goalies all season, is the opposite true for teammates?

That’s probably not the only reason it’s taken 14 seasons to get another full-right tandem in the NHL -- the overall decline of right-catching goalies also makes it less likely -- but it was something the Capitals considered before combining Lindgren and Thompson.

“Oh yeah, we thought about it. We talked about it and tried to brainstorm different things, that if it becomes an issue, what can we do,” Capitals coach Spencer Carbery said. “We were actually concerned about that at the beginning of the year, and because we were scoring at such a high rate early in the season I actually thought it was good for our shooters.”

Washington entered the break for the 4 Nations Face-Off leading the NHL with a shooting percentage of 13.0 percent and tied with the Tampa Bay Lightning for second in the League with an average of 3.56 goals per game. Last season, the Capitals were 28th in goals per game (2.63) and in 2022-23 was 20th (3.09). Washington was 18th in shooting percentage (9.9 percent) each season.

“If you look at the body of work this season and compare it to my first two years here, we’re scoring at a pretty elite clip, so it definitely hasn’t affected our shooters,” Lindgren said.

One area the Capitals are concerned about is shootouts, and the ability to practice them properly.

Washington is 0-3 in shootouts and has scored on one of 10 attempts, a 10.0 percent success rate that is 28th in the NHL, and last among teams that have been in more than one shootout. It includes a 4-3 shootout loss against the Minnesota Wild on Jan. 2 in which none of the three shooters scored on left-catching Marc-Andre Fleury.

It was the one time that Capitals forward Pierre-Luc Dubois felt a difference.

“The only time I’ve noticed it this year in a game is the shootout I went on Fleury,” Dubois said. “When [Thompson] goes one-knee down, his glove side is on the right. But when Fleury did it, it was his blocker, so it kind of threw me off a bit. But I don’t think in a game I’ve thought about it too much. I think honestly now, I’m probably just used to it.”

To help make sure it doesn’t become a bigger issue in shootouts, the Capitals bring in a left-catching goalie for practices at home.

“We talked about it as a staff, how do we practice, how do we get better at shootouts?” Carbery said. “There’s not a lot we can accomplish with Logan and Charlie to prepare our players, because it’s opposite moves when they go against them, so we’ve tried to do some shootout stuff with a third goalie in town that catches left … and help our guys be able to work on their shootout moves and whatnot.

“It provides challenges, but I honestly think at the end of the day the shooters are so good now that they know the catch and they can just make that adjustment in-game when they’re going against a lefty to righty catch.”

Thompson believes the style that a goalie plays in practice might make a bigger difference than the hand with which they catch, at least based on some conversations with teammates.

“In practice, there’s been players [who] say they think it helps them,” Thompson said. “We play a different style than lefties, is what guys like [defenseman] John Carlson have said. Me and Charlie are very similar and more old school in a lot of ways. We are more hybrid, react, kind of the older-style goalies that I think are slowly dying out of this League.”

Right-catching goalies also seem to be on a decline in the NHL.

Among 92 goalies to appear in an NHL game this season, only five catch right, and Lindgren, Thompson and Karel Vejmelka of the Utah Hockey Club are the only three presently in NHL.

It’s part of a steady decline of full-right goalies since 2013-14, when nine combined to play 175 games. In 2020-21, four right-hand catching goalies combined to make 41 NHL starts, the fewest since three goalies combined to make 39 starts in 1963-64.

Even the 152-start pace for right-catching goalies this season is a big drop from the NHL average of 287 starts from 1979-80 to 1988-89, including a League-high 13 goalies catching with their right hand in 1983-84, and a League-high 406 starts the following season.

The irony of the decline is goalies usually can find right-handed gloves more easily than their predecessors.

Grant Fuhr, a Hockey Hall of Famer who played 868 NHL games during 19 seasons from 1981-2000, spent his first several seasons catching with his left hand before his dad helped him turn a right-handed baseball glove into a goalie glove.

Tampa Bay Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, who won the Vezina Trophy as the best goalie in the NHL in 2019, switched to catching with his left hand because he couldn’t get a glove for his right in Russia.

But availability has improved through hockey specialty stores and online retailers.

“I remember going into hockey stores when I was younger and 95 percent of the catching-glove rack would be left-handed catchers,” Lindgren said. “It was really slim pickings.”

Lindgren is glad he found one he liked, though, because he does believe it’s an advantage as a goalie, even if it hasn’t become a disadvantage for teammates this season.

“I do think it helps because guys are so used to shooting on left-handed goalies,” Lindgren said. “That’s what 90 percent of the League is and then they just get someone that catches the other way and it’s a completely different look.”