Aliaksei Protas and Trevor van Riemsdyk score for Washington, which begins the regular season Oct. 12.
The Washington Capitals concluded their six-game preseason slate with a 2-0 win Saturday over the Boston Bruins at Capital One Arena. The Capitals now have a week to prepare for their regular season opener at home against the New Jersey Devils on Oct. 12.
Aliaksei Protas opened the scoring for Washington with a shorthanded goal in the first period. Protas lined up for a faceoff against Boston’s Morgan Geekie, followed the puck when it popped loose and beat Brandon Bussi (30 saves) over his pad to give Washington the lead.
Defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk made it 2-0 with 5:38 left in the third period on a backhander that he lifted under the crossbar, into a narrow window over Bussi’s shoulder.
The Bruins mustered just 17 shots on goal; Capitals goaltender Charlie Lindgren handled them all in his second start of the preseason.
“Highly competitive game out there. We did some good things,” Coach Spencer Carbery said. “Offensively, we’re still — it’s going to be a work in progress. When you control play like that, you would expect to get three, four, five [goals]. It’s 1-0 until the end. … We’ll continue to work at that.”
The Capitals finished the preseason 3-3. Here are three takeaways from the win:
Full group together
For the first time in the preseason, Washington’s full lineup took the ice together. The forward lines and defensive pairs have largely remained the same throughout camp, so each combination had played together before Saturday, but the full lineup hadn’t yet played in the same game.
The Bruins offered nearly a polar opposite; Boston barely reached the required threshold of eight veterans in the lineup. The disparity between the groups makes it more difficult to evaluate how the Capitals look as a whole, but getting everyone on the ice in the same game was an important step for cohesion when the real games begin, particularly for Lindgren.
“That matters to me,” Lindgren said. “You’re just getting a feel for the new guys. You can do that a little in practice. You can kind of get a feel of the way they play, but obviously in a game it’s different, when you’re playing against opponents that are competing hard. You really get a feel for the guys in front of you. … We have a really talented, really good dressing room here, both on and off the ice.”
Andrew Cristall gets a final look
Carbery said Friday that the coaching staff hadn’t decided whether anyone on the roster’s fringe would get a last look in the preseason finale. The intention was to use the game as a full dress rehearsal, and when winger Sonny Milano skated with Hendrix Lapierre and Protas at Friday’s practice, it appeared as though that would be the trio on the third line Saturday.
But 19-year-old Andrew Cristall instead slotted in on the left wing, in place of Milano, and got one last chance to state his case to make the NHL. Cristall has been one of the Capitals’ best players throughout the preseason but is caught in a difficult spot as he’s too young to play in the American Hockey League, so his only options are the NHL — where, at 5-foot-10 and 183 pounds, he might not be physically ready — or to return to juniors, where he already has been a dominant force.
Cristall, again, was a bright spot Saturday. His skill and intelligence for the game stand out on nearly every shift, and his improved skating allows him to be tenacious and committed on the defensive side of the puck. For the first time this preseason, he didn’t find the scoresheet, but his creativity and high-end abilities with the puck were on full display.
He skated just 10:24, though — less than the rest of Washington’s forwards.
“There’s some things that, for being a smaller guy, bumped off the puck a little bit, some puck battle stuff. But then you see the breakaway, and [he] had another good chance in the first period,” Carbery said. “He does a lot of good things, and he’s around the puck. He’s continued to prove through training camp — and earned and proven — that he deserves to be here right to the bitter end.”
Bear, Sgarbossa sent to Hershey
The Capitals placed defenseman Ethan Bear and forwards Mike Sgarbossa and Luke Philp on waivers Friday; after they cleared, all three were assigned to Hershey, Washington’s AHL affiliate, on Saturday. Philp was expected to be in the AHL; his assignment came after most of the prospects were sent down from camp because he was dealing with an injury.
Bear and Sgarbossa, though, are the first significant cuts for the Capitals. Initial 23-player rosters are due at 5 p.m. Monday, and Washington now has 25 signed players on the camp roster — not counting Jakub Vrana, who is on a professional tryout, and injured veterans T.J. Oshie and Nicklas Backstrom.
The gymnastics the Capitals will do to maximize their salary cap relief from placing Backstrom and Oshie on long-term injured reserve are complex. Salary cap analysis website PuckPedia wrote an explainer of the specifics, but in essence, assigning Bear to Hershey will help Washington come as close to the salary cap as possible, which maximizes its LTIR salary pool.
Bear didn’t have a standout camp, which was perhaps to be expected after he played just 24 games last season. He joined the Capitals in December after offseason shoulder surgery and then entered the NHL/NHLPA’s player assistance program in March.
Sgarbossa, 32, finished last season with Washington and will undoubtedly be high on the list for a call-up from Hershey as an injury replacement.
