Feb. 9 vs. Utah Hockey Club at Capital One Arena
Time: 12:30 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps Radio 24/7
Washington Capitals (36-11-7)
Utah Hockey Club (23-25-7)
Washington hosts its virtually annual Super Sunday matinee match, with the Utah Hockey Club in town to provide the opposition. Sunday afternoon’s contest between the Caps and the UHC is the final game prior to the 4 Nations break for both teams, and it’s one of only two NHL games scheduled for Sunday. Tampa Bay visits Montreal on Sunday afternoon as well, and then the League goes dark until resuming the 2024-25 regular season on Feb. 22.
Some six weeks ago, the Caps and the other 31 teams came out of the NHL’s annual three-day holiday break. As his team got set to return to action, Washington coach Spencer Carbery made note of this somewhat unique midsection to the season, a run of 21 games in 44 nights in between the holiday break and the 4 Nations break that is now upon us.
“This portion of the season is interesting; I was looking at it over the break,” said Carbery on the morning of Dec. 27. “You can split the season into three parts. You've got the 34 games that we just played – almost half the season – and then you have Christmas break, deep breath, and now we've got 21 games in 44 days before the Four Nations [tournament in February]. Sort of like your middle portion of the season, and then the final push.
“So these 21 [games] in 44 [nights] is our middle where I feel like we can really help ourselves out as a team and set us up for the final push. And we go out to Western Canada as part of this; we don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. It’s a good, strong 44 days and 21 games that will be really important for our team and for our group.”
With only one more game of those 21 to be played, the Caps have passed that portion of the season with flying colors. With a 13-2-5 mark in the first 20 of those games, Washington is tied with Detroit (15-4-1) with the highest points percentage (.775) over that stretch. Detroit handed the Caps one of their two regulation losses over that stretch, a 4-2 setback in the second half of a set of back-to-backs in Motown on Dec. 29.
“I think our game [has had its ups and downs] a little bit,” says Carbery in assessing the period between then breaks. “I thought it really started to climb over the Western trip; we played some really good hockey. [It’s been] a little bit touch and go here the last little bit, but we’ve found ways to get points, we’ve found ways to win some games. Even like the overtime game in Ottawa and coming back in that game."
“We’ve done a lot of good things in this portion, and so now this will set us up to completely get away from the game of hockey, get away from the NHL, get away from everything that has to do with the pressures, the preparation. I really want our guys to utilize this break and just get away from it all for nine days, and reset mentally and physically and be able to come back as refreshed as possible, and energized and ready for this final stretch.”
Since the calendar flipped to 2025, Washington has failed to get at least a point only once, in a 2-1 defeat at the hands of the Canucks in Vancouver on Jan. 25. The Caps are now 11-1-5 in the 2025 portion of the season. Sunday’s game is their last one for nearly two weeks, and they’re looking to keep their collective feet firmly on the gas pedal for 60 more minutes of hockey, in an afternoon game, to boot.
“It is challenging,” says Carbery. “The afternoon game provides another challenge, because you don’t have your game day routine or the [morning] skate, meetings. So we’ll do our best as a staff to make sure that their minds are present and they’re focused. We’re trying to finish this thing the right way. We’ve got 28 hours left of making sure that we’re dialed in. We want to make sure that we finish this the right way.”
With its Sunday visit to DC, Utah concludes a three-game road trip and a set of back-to-back matinee matches. The UHC’s journey began on a high note with a 3-2 overtime win over the Jackets in Columbus on Thursday, but the middle match of the trip didn’t go nearly as well. The Hurricanes routed the UHC in Raleigh on Saturday afternoon, powering past it with a four-goal second period.
Playing its first season in Salt Lake City after spending more than a quarter of a century in Arizona as the Coyotes, the UHC has been better on the road (14-11-3) than at its new Delta Center digs (9-12-6) in SLC.
Regardless of their home city, their home arena or the color or logo on their sweaters, the team formerly known as the Arizona Coyotes – but initially merged from the WHA to the NHL as the original iteration of the Winnipeg Jets in the League – has had the better of the Capitals for a few seasons now.
Famously, in his first game ever against the nomadic Winnipeg/Arizona/Utah franchise, Caps captain Alex Ovechkin scored “The Goal,” on Jan. 16, 2006 in Arizona. That contest marked the first of 26 the Caps played against the Arizona franchise in the Ovechkin era. Washington won fewer than half (12-11-3) of those games, and it was never able to win more than two straight against the Coyotes.
The Caps were never able to score as many as six goals against Arizona after Ovechkin’s first game against them. In the last five meetings between the two clubs in Washington, the Caps were just 1-3-1 against the Coyotes, culminating with a 5-2 loss here last March 3.
