Oct. 17 vs. Minnesota Wild at Capital One Arena
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN/Caps Radio Network
Minnesota Wild (2-2-0)
Washington Capitals (3-1-0)
Sporting their new third jerseys and red helmets, the Capitals continue their four-game homestand on Friday night when they host the Minnesota Wild at Capital One Arena. After starting the season with a pair of games against Atlantic Division foes and a pair of contests against fellow Metropolitan Division denizens, the Caps now face three straight Western Conference opponents to conclude this homestand.
Tuesday against Tampa Bay, the Caps won a 3-2 overtime decision over the Lightning. Despite never leading in the game, Washington pulled two points when Jakob Chychrun converted a Tom Wilson feed in overtime, lifting the Caps to victory after they twice battled back after falling behind by a goal.
Wilson’s assist on the game-winner was his 400th career point. The veteran winger was involved in all three Washington goals, scoring the Caps’ first power-play goal of the season to knot the game at 2-2 in the third period, and helping to set up Aliaksei Protas’ third goal of the season late in the second period.
Playing center in the absence of P-L Dubois, who missed Tuesday’s game with a lower body injury, Connor McMichael made a brilliant play to set up that Protas goal. Seeing Wilson loft a puck out of Washington’s end to quell a Tampa Bay offensive uprising, McMichael read Bolts blueliner J.J. Moser reaction, and he acted accordingly.
McMichael outraced the Tampa defenseman to the puck, then sent it back to the front – through the legs of Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman – right to Protas, who was able to bury it before Bolts goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy could react at all; he was focused entirely on McMichael.
“Originally, I saw [Moser] jump and try to catch the puck,” recounts McMichael. “And from my point of view, I saw that it was going to go over his head, so I just started skating. I knew it was going to go all the way down the ice, and I just wanted to get to the puck as quick as possible, and to give myself more time.
“I did a quick shoulder check, and I saw Pro coming in late, and he did a great job of finding that little soft area. I was fortunate to get it through [Hedman’s] legs, and it worked out.”
Playing mostly at left wing last season, McMichael had a breakout season with 26 goals and 57 points while averaging 16:49 per night in ice time as a top six winger. Playing the left side in the first three games this season, McMichael averaged 15:42. As the team’s third line center on Tuesday against Tampa Bay, his ice time dipped to 13:33.
The sample sizes are obviously small with all numbers this early in the season, but we wondered whether playing McMichael in a third line center role might limit his ice time, and along with it, his offensive production.
“I think it’s just something that I have to keep an eye on to make sure that he’s being deployed enough and getting the adequate minutes that he needs,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “And [the minutes] we need him to get because anytime he’s on the ice, usually it’s a positive for our team. That’s just an in game [task], making sure that I find him extra shifts if he is playing third line.
“And then the offensive part of it, I don’t know; we’ll have to see. We haven’t really been shaped out to the three lines that maybe we had anticipated with [Hendrix Lapierre] playing well in camp and earning the opportunity to play there. If it does get to a point where we’ve got Dubois back and Mikey is playing third line center, we’ll see how it works out offensively.
“Is that line able to produce or able to generate as much as the other two lines? And do I need to give him more looks power play wise? But we feel pretty confident about Mikey and wherever we play him and just making sure he’s getting the adequate minutes he needs.”
For the third time in the last five seasons, the Caps have opened the season with three wins in their first four games. Last season, the Caps dropped their opener at home before winning their next five. Four games into last season, Washington was 3-1-0 with a 16-14 goal differential. In 2021-22, the Caps started 3-0-1 with a 16-7 goal differential.
This season, the Caps are 3-1-0 despite scoring only nine goals in their first four games; they’ve got a 9-7 goal differential. Drilling down on the goals against, four have come on the power play and another was an empty-net goal. Washington has yielded just two goals at 5-on-5 in its first 241 minutes of hockey this season.
Minnesota opened its season with a 5-0 shutout win over the Blues in St. Louis. Columbus thumped the Wild in Minny’s home opener, but the Wild salvaged a split of the two-game homestand with a shootout victory over the Kings.
Now, the Wild has taken to the road and its Friday night stop in the District is the second game of a five-game road trip. Minnesota started the journey in Dallas on Tuesday with a 5-2 loss in the Stars’ home opener.
“Well-coached team, work extremely hard,” says Carbery of the Wild. “They don’t give you anything for free; you’re going to have to work for everything you get offensively. That always tests you because it tests not only do you have to work extremely hard to create quality opportunities and generate goals, but it tests your resolve because you have to stay with it with them. If you deviate and are now trying to force the issue, that’s when you can get into problems with them.
“And they have their two young superstars – plus a lot of other good players – in [Matt] Boldy and [Kirill] Kaprizov, who have really come into their own in the last couple of years, and Brock Faber is a heck of a player as well. It’ll be a real good test for us once again on home ice.”
Then there’s the matter of the Minnesota power play, which currently has a side hustle: cooling down the sun.
A quarter of the League’s 32 teams – including the Capitals – has either zero or just one power-play goal to this point of the season. Minnesota’s extra-man unit has struck for 10 goals in the team’s first four games. Heading into tonight’s slate of NHL activity, the Wild has scored as many or more goals on the power play as a dozen of the League’s team’s have totaled at all strengths to date, again including the Capitals, who enter Friday’s game having scored nine goals on the season to this point.
“I haven’t looked at the film yet, and I’m dreading that,” says Carbery. “But when they told me this morning, ‘They have 10 power-play goals,’ I’m like, ‘No, no, no. You can’t have 10 power-play goals in four games.’ When they said that, I’m like, ‘They’re averaging two and a half power-play goals a game?? That is insane.’
“I’m going to be watching it later on [Thursday], and I’m going to be sweating in my chair in the office.”
