ARLINGTON, VA — The Washington Capitals are one game away from the second round as their series with the Montreal Canadiens returns to DC. After winning two in a row at home and splitting a pair of games in Montreal, the Caps will look to end the Habs’ season in Game 5 and avoid heading back up north for another road game.
Washington has not won a series since lifting the Stanley Cup in 2018, suffering five first-round losses in the years since. They’re now up three wins to one as they look to break that streak on Wednesday night.
Lars Eller, who scored the Capitals’ last series-winning goal nearly seven years ago, is confident that his team can perform under pressure.
“I think we’re just comfortable when the games are close all year,” he said Tuesday. “We don’t deviate from our game plan. I don’t think anybody’s trying to do too much, or we’re not getting shaky or nervous. All year, it’s been the same now in the playoffs — we just stay the course and we find a way to win those games and get that goal, whether it’s early in the third or late in the third or overtime.”
After a 6-3 loss in Game 3, the Capitals bounced back to close out their trip to Montreal, putting up a four-goal third period in Game 4 to win 5-2. Pierre-Luc Dubois hoped the team could channel that momentum into their fourth win of the series on Wednesday.
“It’s funny. (Somebody once said,) ‘The series doesn’t start ’till somebody loses at home,’ and that’s finally happened,” he said. “So it’s our turn to win at home next game to close this series out. You never want it to drag. Obviously, they’re going to be playing probably their best game of the season. They don’t want to go back home empty-handed. So for us, it’s going to be about preparing today. We had a good practice, tomorrow we’ll have good meetings, and we’ll be ready to go.”
A victory in Game 5 would also see the Capitals clinch a series at home for the first time in a decade. All six of the Caps’ most recent series wins have come on the road, including all four rounds of their 2018 Cup run, and they last sent a team packing from DC in 2015, when they downed the New York Islanders in Game 7 of the first round.
Even before the 10-year drought since last clinching at home, the Capitals have won most of their playoff series on the road. Just eight of the franchise’s 20 series wins have been at home, including only three during the Ovechkin era.
Only three players from that 2015 team — Alex Ovechkin, John Carlson, and Tom Wilson — will play for the Capitals Wednesday night. Wilson said Tuesday that neither the 3-1 series lead nor the chance to end the series in DC would impact the team’s approach to the game, but he acknowledged the desire to win on home ice.
“In this group, we don’t think about that stuff,” he said. “We’re focused on one game. We’ve got a very narrow focus right now. We’re not looking years back, last year’s group, two years, five years, whatever.
“We want to keep this machine rolling in here. We want to keep these guys dialed in. You always want to win on home ice; you always want to win every game. We’ll be extremely motivated. We’re working really hard to get it done.”
Nic Dowd, meanwhile, saw Game 5 not just as a single game but partially as the culmination of a season’s worth of work. He was part of the last Capitals team to win three games in a series, but that 2019 squad dropped both Game 6 and Game 7 to the Carolina Hurricanes to end the season. After this year’s roster has put in so much for the opportunity they’ll have on Wednesday night, Dowd wants to make sure he and his teammates make the most of it this time.
“82 games plus playoffs, you put yourself into a position to have success and then when you have an opportunity to end a series or close the door, you have to take advantage of that,” he said. “You play all year for home ice and to put yourself in a good situation and we’ve done that, but that job’s not done and we still have a lot of work to do. It’s going to be a really good game tomorrow.”
That doesn’t mean the job will be easy. Though the Capitals are up 3-1 in the series, the path to get there has been closer than their record might suggest. Game 1 went to overtime after a late-game Canadiens comeback, while the Caps’ two other wins were both one-goal games until Montreal head coach Martin St. Louis pulled his goaltender.
Spencer Carbery knew his team would have to take another step in Game 5 in order to deal the final blow to the Canadiens’ season.
“I’d like to see our best game of the series tomorrow night,” he said Tuesday. “The killer instinct part of it is, for me, our team and our individual players understanding that we need one more level to get to as a team and and as an individual player,” he said. “We’re going to need a little bit more than you showed in Game 4, a little bit more than you showed in Game 3.
“Even the first two games at home — we need a little bit more to push this team out of the fight, and that’s what it’s going to require tomorrow night. I think that the killer instinct is going to come with understanding the level that we’re going to have to play at tomorrow night to win a hockey game.”
Carbery’s players expressed a similar sentiment.
“The close-out game’s always the toughest,” remarked Anthony Beauvillier.
Beyond the difficulties in finishing any series, the Capitals know this year’s Canadiens can pull themselves back from the brink. The Habs ranked last in the league on November 15 and appeared likely to miss the playoffs up until the end of the regular season, but they put up a record of 7-1-2 in their last 10 games to force their way into the final wild-card spot.
The Canadiens have risen to the occasion in do-or-die moments this season, and the Capitals know they’ll be ready to do it again in Game 5.
“They’ve been playing hard, desperate hockey for a while,” Wilson said. “They clawed their way into the playoffs. They’ve played us really hard to this point in the series, so we’re not expecting anything different. We’re going to get their best game, so we’ve got to come with ours.”
With a dominant regular season and a winning record in the playoffs so far, the Capitals know they’re capable of closing out the series. But after sizing up their competition in the last four games, they know they’ll have to rise to the occasion to do so.
“I don’t even need to throw out all the cliches of the fourth game,” Carbery said. “I think that the easiest thing to point to is the Montreal Canadiens and what they’ve been through as a team, so if you just look at this team and the resilience, and the post-4 Nations tournament, and all the stuff that they’ve been through, you know exactly what type of game the Montreal Canadiens are going to play tomorrow night…
“I’m not worried about our guys overlooking or feeling overconfident in the moment. That’s just not who we are as a team. It never has been in the time that I’ve been here. But you do have to understand that it’s going to take our best to win a game and eliminate the Montreal Canadiens. You are going to get their best punch tomorrow night.”
