First We Take Manhattan – Washington makes its lone visit of the season to Manhattan tonight to take on the New York Rangers. The Rangers and Islanders are the two Metro Division teams the Caps face only three times this season instead of the typical four; the Caps conclude their season’s series against the Blueshirts here tonight.
The Caps hosted the Isles in late November, but they have yet to visit Long Island. They’ll do so twice in April.
Having won two straight games by identical 4-0 scores, the Rangers are now seeking their first three-game winning streak in over 100 days, since Nov. 19. New York is also seeking its first win over Washington this season; the Caps prevailed over the Rangers 5-3 on Oct. 29 and 7-4 on Jan. 4 in DC. But the Rangers have also been a highly active team in making personnel moves; the team we see at Madison Square Garden tonight will look different than either iteration they faced earlier in the campaign.
“Dating back a while,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery, “but I thought in both games, we played well, did a lot of good things. We looked at some of the stuff this morning; their team has changed now quite a bit. A lot of the clips you’re seeing Filip Chytil, now [with the Vancouver Canucks]. But we know J.T. Miller well, and we know some of the other additions pretty well, and so we’ll try to replicate some of the things we do.
“And a lot of the guys still on our team are familiar with [Rangers coach Peter Laviolette] and his systems and how that all works. And we saw these guys [in the playoffs] in the springtime [last year]. So we know what’s going on over there. We’re really, really focused on our game and what it looks like tonight, and especially the desperation and the urgency that we play with from shift to shift.”
For varying reasons including injuries, trades and others, nine of the 20 players who suited up for New York on Oct. 29 in the first meeting of the season between these two teams will not suit up tonight.
Last Stretch Of The Road – Including tonight’s tilt with the Rangers in New York, the Caps have 21 games remaining in the season. Heading into the final quarter of this campaign is significantly different than at the same time last season, when the Caps were scratching and clawing and vying to climb up the Eastern Conference standings ladder and into a playoff position, an objective they achieved in the waning minutes of their final regular season game in Philadelphia last April 16.
This season is vastly different.
Going into tonight’s game, the Caps own a comfortable 10-point cushion over second-place Carolina in the Metropolitan Division standings, and they hold a seven-point advantage over Toronto and Florida for the top spot in the Eastern Conference.
“Certainly it’s completely different from last year,” says Caps goalie Charlie Lindgren. “But I think the mindset should be that we’re trying to build, and we’re trying to build for something special and we want to be playing our best hockey at the end of the year. What we’ve done so far has been awesome. The team has exceeded expectations, certainly from the outside. And obviously we’ve had a belief inside this room that we can do special things. But I think that every single game we should go in with the mindset that we want to prove ourselves, and certainly we still want to win a ton of games here down the stretch.
“To me, that’s what it’s all about. In game 82, we want to be playing as confident as possible. We don’t want to be going into the playoffs limping in, we want to be playing our best hockey of the year. We’ve played some really good hockey so far, but I still think there is room to grow, and there’s places and areas of our game that we can get better at, and that’s what these last [21] games are all about.
On March 5 of last year, the Caps were coming off a devastating home ice loss to the Arizona Coyotes, a setback that left them in 10th place in the Eastern Conference standings, seven points south of the second wild card playoff berth.
Instead of white-knuckling their way through the final quarter of the season with the importance of every game and every shift magnified, the Caps have some breathing room this time around. They can actively work on and attempt to hone their individual and collective games to get themselves battle ready for when the Stanley Cup playoffs get underway on April 19.
“We’ve put ourselves in a great position, the best position that we could have,” says Caps center Dylan Strome. “We want to keep our game sharp, and we want to keep everything in top shape, like we’ve been doing most of the year. And I’m sure Carbs will have us dialed in for each different game. I think it’s just about our game, and fine tuning our game and getting ready for what’s to come.
“This far into the season, you know what type of season you’re having, and you know what you’re doing to be successful. I think it’s mostly about a little bit of fine tuning, I think it’s just playing hard and playing the right way.
“Our team is really good at making sure that we come to play every game, and we’ve done that every game this year. We haven’t had too many off nights; there was one in Detroit [Dec. 29] that wasn’t great, but besides that game we haven’t had too many where we haven’t had it from start to finish. And I think that’s a great quality to have, especially heading into the time when the games are more important. We’re looking forward to have an opportunity to play at a high level.”
The Caps have leveled off here in the last little while. They lost three straight home games last week. They’ve yielded three or more goals against in each of the last 11 games, a fate that hasn’t befallen them in nearly 35 years now (Dec. 15, 1990 to Jan. 6, 1991 was the most recent of 15 such instances in franchise history).
“If I’m being honest, the first 15 games of the year, first 20 games of the year was, to me, our best hockey of the year,” asserts Lindgren. “I felt like we were, at times, dominating teams, and actually, not just at times, but I felt like we were doing it night in, night out. And now, maybe the last little bit here since the new year, it’s maybe been a little bit more back and forth for our liking.
“So we’ve got to clean some things up, like breaking pucks out of our zone, just playing a more consistent brand of hockey, starting on time, tightening up a little bit defensively, maybe. Those are some areas we can just fine tune, which is a good thing. Being honest and looking the mirror and saying, ‘Okay, hey these are maybe some spots we can get better in,’ that’s what good teams do because you want to keep on building. That’s just what I believe, and I think we are in a really good spot.”
Carbery is in full agreement. After Tuesday’s practice at home, he spoke at length on the situation, perhaps even shedding light on why some first-round Stanley Cup playoff upsets take place.
“It’s significantly different,” says Carbery of his team’s situation at this stage of the season. “And which you might not think, [but] I’m finding just as challenging, believe it or not. Because it’s a fine line of pushing the group and wanting us to be at our best, but also understanding and being sympathetic to the fact that our players look at the standings and they see where we’re at. But it’s a fine line.
“Like I’ve said over the last couple of weeks, you need to be very, very careful of letting your game individually and collectively snowball to a spot that you don’t really like what you see and you’re not playing that well. Things aren’t going your way, and you start to slip with some of your details inside of your game, and now your line doesn’t have quite as much chemistry, your [defense] pair starts to be on for goals against. So little things like that; your special teams starts to slip a little bit, and now you’re trying to catch it and now you’re trying to find it, and all of a sudden, you’re running out of runway. Now, you’re scrambling.
“And that’s what I think we need to be very cognizant of, as a group and individually. Because I’ve felt like as a group, we haven’t looked great. And individually, we’ve got a lot of guys that aren’t playing their best hockey of the year right now, which at this time of year, that’s what you want it to look like. Coming out of the break, the two games against Edmonton and [Pittsburgh] maybe gave us a little bit of false reality – ‘Oh, this is going to be easy; we’ll be able to cruise down the stretch and score seven goals a game.’ But we found out quickly that’s not going to be the case. Hopefully, we can catch this quickly and get our game back in order.”
Getting that game back in order is a collective thing, but what each individual does with his mindset, his work ethic and his own game can contribute to that greater good.
“The ability to stay even keel is something that you can always work on going into the playoffs, like down a goal, up a goal, up three goals, down three goals; it doesn’t matter,” says Caps center Nic Dowd. “You just want guys playing consistent hockey the right way. And some nights, you’re not going to win, but if you do that for the majority of the nights, you’re going to win hockey games, and you’re going to come back and win hockey games, and you’re going to hold leads. That’s important.
“Our special teams need to continue to get better. Pick out our weaknesses on video or in practice and work on that, which we are doing. And individually, I think guys just need to try to stay consistent as we go down the stretch. And I think it’s important to work hard in practice because you can get a lot out of that. You can feel good, and you can feel confident about your game, and I think that’s important late in the year.
“Sometimes, it’s difficult to practice and work on your game. And sometimes, it’s good to get out there and try to get better even as the season progresses. But try to find consistency individually, to where you get to a point in the playoffs and you need to be playing your best hockey, and you’ve spent that time to work on the things that you need to get better at.”
In The Nets – Lindgren gets the net for the Caps tonight as he makes his first start since his three-year contract extension was announced Monday morning. In his last seven starts, Lindgren is 3-2-1 with a shutout, a 2.67 GAA and an .890 save pct. Lifetime against the Rangers in the regular season, he is 2-1-0 with a shutout, a 1.34 GAA and a .955 save pct. in three appearances, all starts.
Igor Shesterkin is the starter for the Blueshirts tonight. All even at 21-21-2 on the season, Shesterkin has won three of his last four starts. He enters tonight’s game on the heels of a 21-save shutout here over the Islanders two nights ago, his fourth of the season. Lifetime against Washington in the regular season, Shesterkin is 8-5-0 with a 2.70 GAA and a .916 save pct. in 13 appearances, all starts.
All Lined Up – Here’s how we believe the Capitals and the Rangers might look on Wednesday night in Manhattan:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
21-Protas, 17-Strome, 8-Ovechkin
24-McMichael, 80-Dubois, 43-Wilson
88-Mangiapane, 20-Eller, 53-Frank
22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 16-Raddysh
Defensemen
38-Sandin, 74-Carlson
42-Fehervary, 3-Roy
6-Chychrun, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Extras
52-McIlrath
Out/Injured
15-Milano (upper body)
19-Backstrom (hip)
77-Oshie (back)
NEW YORK
Forwards
10-Panarin, 16-Trocheck, 13-Lafreniere
50-Cuylle, 8-J.T. Miller, 93-Zibanejad
78-Othmann, 71-Parssinen, 22-Brodzinski
65-Berard, 39-Carrick, 73-Rempe
Defensemen
79-A. Miller, 17-Borgen
18-Vaakanainen, 4-Schneider
44-de Haan, 6-Jones
Goaltenders
31-Shesterkin
32-Quick
Extras
29-Robertson
34-Kaliyev
91-Smith
Out/Injured
20-Kreider (upper body)
23-Fox (upper body)
84-Edstrom (lower body)
