Carbery alters forward lines ahead of homestand finale vs. New York
Jan. 4 vs. New York Rangers at Capital One Arena
Time: Noon
TV: ABC, ESPN+
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps Radio 24/7
New York Rangers (17-19-1)
Washington Capitals (25-10-3)
The Caps conclude a three-game homestand on Saturday afternoon when they host the New York Rangers for the second and final time this season. Washington has collected at least a point in each of the first two games of the homestand (1-0-1). Saturday’s game against the Rangers is the Caps’ lone game against a Metro Division foe in a span of 13 contests.
In Thursday’s middle match of the homestand, the Caps dropped a 4-3 shootout decision to the Minnesota Wild. In the final Washington appearance of Marc-Andre Fleury’s 21-year NHL career, the future Hockey Hall of Fame goaltender earned the 28th win of his career over the Capitals, and he was also nicked for the 28th goal he has surrendered to Washington captain Alex Ovechkin over the two decades the two players have battled against one another.
Ovechkin’s Thursday night goal was No. 871 for his NHL career, leaving him 23 tallies shy of matching Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL mark of 894.
Although the Caps are a respectable 2-1-1 in their four games coming out of the NHL’s holiday break, they’re still in a bit of a funk offensively. Washington is still tied for second in the League with 92 goals at 5-on-5 this season, but it finished 30th in 5-on-5 scoring last month. The Caps have scored two or fewer goals at 5-on-5 in nine of their last 11 games, going 6-4-1 in the process.
When the Caps convened for a Friday morning practice session at MedStar Capital Iceplex, they found alterations to three of the team’s four forward lines. The line of P-L Dubois between Aliaksei Protas and Tom Wilson remained intact, but each of the other three units was shifted around. Taylor Raddysh joins Ovechkin and Dylan Strome on a top six line. Andrew Mangiapane takes Raddysh’s place on the right side of a line with Brandon Duhaime and Nic Dowd. And Connor McMichael moves to the middle of a trio with Lars Eller and Jakub Vrana on his wings.
“I’m just looking for a little bit of a different look,” said Carbery after Friday’s practice. “Chemistry on some different lines, see if we can find a little spark with our forward group and some of our [defense] pairs.”
Standings wise, the Caps are fine. But Carbery is not being overly alarmist in his concerns over his team’s recent play. A peek under the hood reveals some mediocre analytics over the last nine games, a span in which Washington has forged a 4-4-1 record, its most “middling” stretch of the season. Goaltending, defense and special teams are currently keeping the Caps afloat, and Carbery is doing his part to stimulate the offense by moving some of the furniture around a bit.
In addition to trying to provide a boost to the Ovechkin-Strome combination, Carbery is on a season long mission to find the optimal combo for what is Washington’s third line, by the way the team runs its pregame line rushes in warmups. To that end, McMichael moves from the wing back to his natural center position, Eller moves to the wing, and Vrana returns to the lineup in the place of Ivan Miroshnichenko.
“Everything we’ve done on that third line, it just hasn’t worked,” says Carbery. “I’ll be very blunt; it has not worked. And we’ve tried different combinations, we’ve tried different wingers, we’ve moved some centermen in and out, and everything we’ve tried there, we just have not found stability on that line this year. And we’re going to try something different, until we find something that can give us some reliable minutes consistently.”
With 47.74 percent of shot attempts at 5-on-5 in their last nine games, the Caps rank 21st in the NHL. They also rank 27th in expected goals for and 29th in share of high danger scoring chances. Essentially, they need to spend less time defending and more time creating and attacking at the opposite end of the ice.
Over four games since Ovechkin’s return, his line – with Strome and McMichael – has controlled just over 40 percent of shot attempts at 5-on-5. When one of your two top offensive lines is playing that much in its own end, it puts pressure on the rest of the lineup.
“I think we are just trying to find something that we can sustain some [offensive] zone pressure with,” says Strome. “That Dubie, Pro and Willie line has been our best line by far, so it’s just trying to find some other balance to help them out, really. They’ve been carrying our team for a while now, so just trying to find something that we can sustain 5-on-5 a bit more.
“Obviously, the last couple of games are not good enough at controlling the play and helping the other line out. It’s on us to figure than out and make sure we’re putting them in a good spot, and not just leaving them out to dry.”
January begins the NHL’s dog days. Carbery mentioned last week that his team has a 21-game sprint between the end of the holiday break and an eight-day midseason break for the Four Nations Tournament next month, and that’s now a 17-game dash with a reasonable 2-1-1 start. Carbery and his staff know a well-timed midseason jolt to the forward group can jumpstart a good hockey team, as can some well-placed speed in the middle of the ice.
“We’ve held off for 38 games,” says Carbery. “I just felt like the time was now, for him to start to get some reps. We’ve always known that Mikey was a natural centerman; he has played there his whole life. We utilized him there at the beginning of the year, and he had a phenomenal start to the year. Even with that start, we always figured eventually he would make his way back to the middle of the ice.
“The time is now for us to try to shake our group up a little bit, try to get a little bit of speed down the middle of the rink, try to get [McMichael] going a little bit and get the puck in his hands a little bit more and him utilizing his speed, a 200-foot game. So we’ll see how that looks.”
When the Caps and Rangers first met this season, here in Washington back on Oct. 29, New York was 6-1-1 entering the game, and it was three points ahead of the Capitals (5-2-0), who held a game in hand. A little over two months later, Washington sits atop the Metropolitan Division and Eastern Conference standings with 53 points (25-10-3) while the Rangers are tied with the Islanders in the basement of the Metro Division with 35 points (17-19-1). Because the Isles have played two more games than the Blueshirts to this point of the campaign, the Islanders are officially in the division’s cellar.
The Caps defeated the Rangers 5-3 in that Oct. 29 game, but New York returned to its winning ways, winning seven of its next nine games. In the last six and a half weeks however, New York has been in free fall mode. At 5-15-0 since Nov. 19 – a span equivalent to nearly a quarter of a season in length – no NHL team has a worse record over that span. No team has scored fewer goals per game (2.10), and only Columbus (3.76) and Chicago (3.68) have surrendered more goals per game than the Rangers (3.65).
Most recently, the Rangers downed the Bruins on Thursday night at Madison Square Garden, halting a four-game losing streak in their first home game since before the League’s holiday break. When they visit the District on Saturday, the Rangers will be seeking their first set of consecutive wins since they won three straight games from Nov. 14-19. New York is 2-9-0 in its last 11 road contests.
