With both teams' goaltending situations murky, Caps seek return to form in Sunday's Game 4 trucc

April 27 vs. Montreal Canadiens at Bell Centre

Time: 6:30 p.m.

TV: MNMT, TNT, truTV, MAX

Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps Radio 24/7

Washington Capitals (51-22-9)
Montreal Canadiens (40-31-11)

Washington leads series, 2-1

All throughout the regular season, one of the hallmarks of the Washington Capitals has been their ability to bounce back from bad beats. Their resolve in that regard will be tested yet again on Sunday in Montreal, when they go up against the Canadiens at Bell Centre in Game 4 of the first-round playoff series between the two clubs.

The Caps arrived in Montreal on Thursday with a 2-0 series lead that was far from commanding. They squeezed out a pair of tightly contested games at Capital One Arena to start the series, and while Washington did a lot of positive things in those games, the Caps were far from dominant against the upstart Canadiens.

The Capitals needed Alex Ovechkin’s first career overtime goal in the playoffs to prevail in Game 1, and they claimed a 3-1 win in Wednesday’s Game 2 largely on the strength of Logan Thompson’s sturdy performance in goal; he made 14 of his 25 saves in a third period in which it felt like the Habs had the puck on their stick for most of the period.

When the scene shifted north to Montreal for Friday’s Game 3, things got strange. The two teams traded goals for the game’s first 44 minutes, and then the Habs scored the last three goals of the game to win 6-3. Both teams were able to stimulate their secondary scoring to a degree in Game 3, but both teams also lost goaltenders that had been playing quite well to midgame injuries.

With Sunday’s pivotal Game 4 on the horizon – a chance for the Canadiens to square the series and a chance for the Capitals to restore their two-game cushion while pushing the Habs to the precipice of elimination – the series has taken an obvious turn. But 24 hours from puck drop, we still don’t know who will be in the crease for either team on Sunday.

“I have no idea,” says Habs coach Martin St. Louis, when queried as to the status of goaltender Sam Montembeault. “He’s being evaluated today.”

“I don’t,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery, asked if he has an update on the condition of goaltender Logan Thompson. “I’ll get an update later on today from our training staff.”

Montembeault departed with an unknown ailment midway through the second period, yielding to rookie Jakub Dobes. Thompson left with under seven minutes remaining in the game when teammate Dylan Strome inadvertently barreled into him while backchecking in vain; Montreal’s Juraj Slafkovsky scored his team’s fifth goal of the game on the play. Charlie Lindgren took over for Thompson.

“It’s never a good feeling when you when you hit your goalie, or you run into your goalie, or you hurt a teammate, whether it's with a shot or whatever,” says Strome. “But hopefully he's all right, and I know he's a pretty tough guy. So hopefully he's good, and it’s just an unfortunate break and one that you don't want to see.”

“Seeing your goalie go down is never a good sign to see, and hopefully he’s going to be okay,” says Caps winger Taylor Raddysh. “It’s a tough thing to give up a goal and lose your goalie at the same time, but hopefully everything is good.”

If Thompson is unable to play, Lindgren is ready to step in as he did on Friday night, against the Montreal organization that gave him his start in pro hockey when it signed him as a college free agent, just under nine years ago.

“I felt bad for Logan,” says Lindgren. “I thought he had a really good game. He made a lot of big saves, kept our team in it, so that was a bummer to see. And there’s six minutes left in the game or whatever, and I think we were down by two, and I guess I got my feet wet. I hadn’t played at the Bell Centre since I essentially left.”

Lindgren departed the Habs’ organization after five years in the summer of 2021 – soon after the Canadiens lost in the Stanley Cup Final to Tampa Bay in late spring of that year – when he signed a free agent deal with the St. Louis Blues.

He began Friday’s game as Thompson’s backup. In the uniquely configured Bell Centre, the visiting team’s backup goaltender sits across the ice from his team’s bench; he can simply turn and walk down the tunnel to the visiting locker room while his teammates must skate across the ice from the bench to do so.

“It’s quite the place to back up, especially in an environment like [Friday] where you’re essentially just sitting with the fans,” says Lindgren. “And I’m probably just as energized as anyone.”

Lindgren started and played all 60 minutes of all four Washington playoff games last spring in the team’s short-lived postseason foray,

“I’ve definitely got a background with this organization, even though there's been a lot of turnover since I left,” says Lindgren. “But at the end of the day, it's the Stanley Cup playoffs; it's playoff hockey. I don't care who you're playing against, you're always going to get up for it; it's always exciting, it's always fun to be a part of. And obviously the building [Friday] was kind of loud, and it's something I've known going back to my days in Montreal; they have a passionate fan base. So obviously, if given the chance, it'd be awesome.”

For Washington on Saturday, there was also a glimmer of potentially good news. Forward Aliaksei Protas – sidelined since sustaining a lower body injury on April 4 – skated on Saturday and could return to the lineup on Sunday if all goes well between now and then.

“He is full go in practice, so we’ll just see [Sunday],” says Carbery. “Everything is looking good, he’s out there taking contact and that, so we’ll just see [Sunday].”

Regardless of who is in the lineup and who is in goal, the Caps know they must play a better overall game for the full 60 minutes on Sunday, and they know they’ve got to both manage and possess the puck more, and they’ve got to be able to maximize their time with it in the offensive zone as well.

“We talked a lot about it,” says Strome. “We just didn’t have enough zone time. We were getting pucks in there, and then kind of throwing them away. We’re just not creating enough; obviously, the shots are indicative of that, and the play.

“Not our best game [Friday] night. Hopefully we learned some things from [Friday] and we can take it into [Sunday] and just play Capitals hockey.”

With all 16 playoff teams now having three games under their belts – after the Tampa Bay-Florida game on Saturday afternoon – the Caps rank 14th among the 16 squads in controlling shot attempts at 5-on-5, at just 43.41 percent. Ironically, both teams beneath them also lead their respective series through three games (Minnesota at 41.21 percent and Toronto at 40.83 percent).

“It’s obviously just handling [the Canadiens],” says Raddysh, “but for us in the offensive zone, no more one-and-dones. I feel like we get one shot and we’re going back the other way. We need to stay on top of them, pressure their [defensemen] and get two or three chances at a time, and maybe good things will go our way, and more goals and offensive time will come from that.”

Montreal’s best players had the puck for much of Friday, so the Caps’ top guns got drubbed in possession analytics. That should provide even more motivation for Washington’s top six forward group to get back on the horse in this spotlight environment of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

During the regular season, the Caps were adept at avoiding lengthy losing streaks. That’s the most crucial factor of all in the playoffs, in a best-of-seven format.

Playoff losing streaks are untenable. Two straight losses are typically troublesome, three are life-threatening, and four are instant offseason. The Caps want to nip this one in the bud.

“I think that’s important, and we’ve done that really well,” says Caps defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk, a Stanley Cup champion with Chicago in 2015. “If you can’t handle the losses – especially in the playoffs – you’re not going to win too many.

“You know it’s going to be hard this time of year. You obviously want to play well every night, but some games just aren’t going to go your way, and your ability to deal with those losses, and come back in the next game and play better, and to get some positives from those losses is key. It’s not going be all great nights in the playoffs; there’s a lot of desperation.

“It was a 2-0 series, they came in desperate, it’s hard to match that, and they did a great job of taking it to us a little bit [Friday] night. Now, we have to refocus and find that desperation within our own game.”

NOTES: On Saturday, Washington’s Tom Wilson and Montreal’s Josh Anderson were each fined $5,000 for unsportsmanlike conduct at the end of the second period of Friday’s Game 3 … Saturday morning, the Caps announced they’ve reassigned forward Ilya Protas – younger brother of Aliaksei – from the OHL Windsor Spitfires to AHL Hershey. The younger Protas was Washington’s third-round pick (74th overall) in the 2024 NHL Draft. He finished second in the OHL scoring race in 2024-25, amassing 50 goals and 74 assists for 124 points. The 18-year-old Protas is the first OHL player in a decade – since Alex DeBrincat in 2014-15 – to score 50 or more goals in his first OHL season, and Protas’ 2.03 points-per-game rate was the highest by a Windsor player over a full season since Jason Spezza’s 2.09 in 2000-01.