Bring It On Home – With the first quarter of the season behind them, the Caps finish up their season series with the Tampa Bay Lightning tonight in the opener of a four-game homestand, matching the team’s longest home stay of the season. Washington went 3-1-0 on a four-game homestand from Oct. 14-21, a stretch that started with a 3-2 overtime win over the Lightning in the opener.
As they take the ice Saturday against the Bolts, the Caps find themselves in the middle of the vacuum compressed Eastern Conference standings, where 16 teams are separated by a mere 10 points, with Carolina (30 points) at the top and Buffalo (20) bringing up the rear.
With 24 points, both the Caps and the Bolts are part of an eight-team mid-conference quagmire; all eight have either 23 or 24 points. Somewhere in the middle of that cluster is the playoff cutline, with three of the teams on the good side and another five on the bad side of the cutline.
One piece of good news here for the Capitals; center Nic Dowd was on the ice for Saturday’s morning skate, and he was in a normal white sweater. Dowd suffered an upper body injury at morning skate prior to Wednesday’s game with Edmonton, and he has missed the last two contests. He won’t play tonight against Tampa Bay, but the fact that he is back on the ice – and in a full contact sweater – is a good sign moving forward. Caps coach Spencer Carbery refers to Dowd as “day-to-day.”
Little Bit Is Better Than Nada – Early this season – and early this month – the Caps found themselves scuffling to score. But recently the logjam has broken, and the lamps are being lit with more regularity, to the point where Washington wakes up this morning as the NHL’s highest scoring team (40 goals) in the month of November.
Veteran top six talents such as Alex Ovechkin and Connor McMichael have started to accrue points with more regularity, and secondary scoring has also kicked in with some keys goals and points coming from the likes of Brandon Duhaime, Anthony Beauvillier, Sonny Milano and Ethen Frank this month.
With Dowd and P-L Dubois both out of the lineup these last two games, the Caps’ fourth line of Milano, Frank and Hendrix Lapierre has found some chemistry and some footing, despite sporadic deployment that’s partially related to some choppy game flow.
Among the 51 NHL forwards with at least 10 games played but averaging less than 11 minutes per night, Frank’s rate of .70 points per game is tops and Milano’s .30 rate ranks sixth. And Milano’s rate of 1.90 shots on net per game is tops among the entire group of 51 players.
Over the last two games, the trio has logged just 10:55 minutes together at 5-on-5, scoring twice and being scored against twice, but it has controlled 72 percent of the shot attempts during that time, and it owns a 10-1 advantage in scoring chances and a 5-1 advantage in high danger scoring chances across that admittedly small sample size.
On Thursday in Montreal, the trio combined for four goals and eight points, despite Frank skating less than nine minutes and Lapierre and Milano both coming in under seven minutes on the night. All three had multi-point nights.
Milano (61.85 percent) and Lapierre (61.75 percent) are the top two Capitals this season in terms of their share of shot attempts while each is on the ice at 5-on-5.
“It’s huge,” says Carbery of the line’s offensive contributions. “The lack of production and lack of scoring, lack of finish – however you want to characterize it – has been well-documented with the start of our year. We were confident that it would turn at some point, and our guys are, too.
“Anytime that lines or individual players can get rewarded and find the back of the net, it makes them feel good. It makes our whole team feel like we can go out and win a game 2-1, but we’re not reliant on that, like, ‘Oh my gosh, if we give up one goal tonight, we’re in trouble.’ That can wear on a team, as you guys felt at the beginning of the year as we were going through that.
“And so, to have the confidence and feel good about, ‘Hey, we’re getting four or five tonight,’ that’s a real luxury. Hopefully, we can continue with doing the little things that are leading to those goals and that production, and guys can continue to build on that individual confidence and line confidence and our back end as well.”
The 700 Club – Caps defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk will play in his 700th career NHL game tonight, becoming just the fifth active undrafted defenseman to do so, and the 71st undrafted blueliner in League history to achieve the feat. van Riemsdyk’s older brother James is now two games shy of 1,100 games in his own NHL career, making the van Riemsdyk boys the 34th set of brothers to each amass as many as 700 games in the NHL.
Trevor van Riemsdyk’s NHL journey has been an impressive one. Following his junior season at U. of New Hampshire – a season cut short by a serious leg injury at a time when he led all Hockey East defensemen in scoring – van Riemsdyk signed as an undrafted free agent with Chicago on March 26, 2014. Just over six months later, he cracked the opening night roster of what would be the Hawks’ third Stanley Cup championship team in six seasons.
van Riemsdyk made his NHL debut on Oct. 9, 2014 with Chicago at Dallas. The following month, he suffered a fractured left patella after blocking a shot off the stick of blueliner Jacob Trouba, then with Winnipeg. The injury required surgery, keeping him out of action until March of 2015, when he went to AHL Rockford on a rehab assignment. van Riemsdyk skated in eight late-season games with the IceHogs, the only AHL action he has seen in his entire pro career.
He returned to the Hawks and played in four Stanley Cup playoff games, becoming a Stanley Cup champion in his rookie season. Drafted by the Vegas Golden Knights in the 2017 expansion draft, van Riemsdyk was flipped to Carolina in a deal the next day, and he joined the Caps as an unrestricted free agent just over five years ago, on Oct. 10, 2020.
Since the start of the 2021-22 season, van Riemsdyk has logged 315 games in a Washington sweater, tied with Alex Ovechkin for the most by any Capital over that span, and leading the team with 561 blocked shots.
“It obviously means a lot,” says van Riemsdyk of the milestone. “You don't get to this point without playing on some really good teams with really good teammates. Obviously, going back to when you first lace up the skates when you're four years old, your parents have to sacrifice a lot, a lot of long weekends in cold rinks and early mornings. And now that I am a dad, you realize how much tougher it can be, but how fun it is; those car rides are what you miss the most. Even my two-year-old son, who can't really talk all that much when he's sitting in the back babbling on, I'm sure I'm really looking forward to those times with him. And without my brothers and all that, without James kind of showing me the ropes and showing me the way – obviously we had different paths – but without him, I know for sure I wouldn't be here, just because I wouldn't have been exposed to all the things he was.”
James van Riemsdyk also went to UNH, and he was the second player drafted in the 2007 NHL Entry Draft, behind only Trevor’s Chicago teammate Patrick Kane.
“I would have been 14 or 15 years old when he was drafted and even younger when he left for the [US National Team Development Program],” says van Riemsdyk of his older brother. “I think our goal growing up was always to play varsity hockey at the local school that we grew up watching, and when my brother made that team as a freshman, it felt like the coolest thing ever.
“And there's not a lot of college hockey, or a lot of guys even that played college hockey at New Jersey or from New Jersey at that point, and now it feels like it's grown a bit. And I think guys like Jim Dowd and my brother kind of kind of paved that way a little bit. James doing that opened up my eyes to all the different things, juniors, different tournaments you could play in and all that stuff, where I was a bit more of a homebody, and I didn't branch out too much, and probably wouldn't get exposed to all that stuff. So, I owe him a lot.”
When Trevor van Riemsdyk reached the 500- and 600-games played milestones in the League, he did so against James’ team. Years from now, the two brothers and the entire van Riemsdyk clan will have a lot of great shared memories to look back upon.
“I think that's what you'll really look back and cherish the most,” he says. “Obviously when you when you first come into the league – when I came in with Chicago – you’re in awe of everything; the pregame meals and how there's great food everywhere you look, and how well you get taken care of. And you think, all of this is the coolest stuff; this is what they're talking about when you're playing in the NHL.
“But then as you as you make your way through the years for the better part of a decade, it's things like that, and also hanging in the locker room in game 40 [of the season] when you’re on a long road trip, when you're all delirious and making jokes. It’s being able to bring your parents and family along for special moments, it’s playing in Madison Square Garden for the first time go after going there growing up for a game every year. It’s a lot of cool memories, but the ones you'll remember most are the ones you got to share you’re your teammates and family.”
And with his other stops along the way, Washington is the place where he has played most of his career – he will log his 336th game as a Capital tonight – and where he and his wife started their family together.
“That's definitely a huge thing,” he says. “It’s the teammates along the way, the people you get to share all these awesome moments with. I obviously made a lot of lifelong friends along the way. But yeah, I started my family here. Coming to the rink here every day is so much fun. We have a great group of guys here. And these last couple of years, especially, I feel like just coming to the rink, the different guys we have in here, the different personalities, it's a lot of fun.
“And I think it shows by the way we were playing last year. I think a lot of guys had their best years, and I think there's a lot of correlation between how much fun we were having and product on the ice.”
In The Nets – After Charlie Lindgren picked up his second straight win with a 25-save effort in the nets on Thursday in Montreal, Logan Thompson returns to the crease tonight against the Lightning, starting against Tampa Bay for the third time in 40 nights.
Thompson leads all NHL netminders with 10 or more games played with a 2.00 GAA, and his .920 save pct. is tied for the top spot. He also leads the League with a .917 high danger save pct. at 5-on-5, per naturalstattrick.com. Thompson has permitted two or fewer goals against in 11 of his 14 starts this season.
Lifetime against the Lightning, he is 1-2-0 with a 2.36 GAA and an .877 save pct. in three appearances – all starts – against Tampa Bay.
For the Lightning, veteran star Andrei Vasilevskiy is the likely starter. He will be seeking his fourth straight victory – and sixth in his last seven starts – tonight against the Caps. In each of his last three starts, Vasilevskiy has permitted exactly one goal against.
Lifetime against the Capitals, Vasilevskiy is 12-11-2 with a shutout, a 3.06 GAA and a .906 save pct. in 25 appearances – all starts.
All Down The Line – Here’s how the Capitals and the Lightning might look on Saturday night in the District:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
72-Beauvillier, 17-Strome, 8-Ovechkin
21-Protas, 34-Sourdif, 43-Wilson
22-Duhaime, 24-McMichael, 9-Leonard
15-Milano, 29-Lapierre, 53-Frank
Defensemen
42-Fehervary, 74-Carlson
6-Chychrun, 3-Roy
38-Sandin, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Healthy Extras
47-Chisholm
52-McIlrath
Injured/Out
26-Dowd (upper body)
80-Dubois (lower body)
TAMPA BAY
Forwards
38-Hagel, 71-Cirelli, 86-Kucherov
59-Guentzel, 21-Point, 17-James
93-Goncalves, 20-Paul, 22-Bjorkstrand
28-Girgensons, 37-Gourde, 42-Douglas
Defensemen
90-Moser, 43-Raddysh
51-D’Astous, 81-Cernak
67-Carlile, 78-Lilleberg
Goalies
88-Vasilevskiy
31-Johansson
Healthy Extras
16-Santini
62-Finley
Injured/Out
24-Crozier (undisclosed)
27-McDonagh (undisclosed)
29-Holmberg (undisclosed)
77-Hedman (undisclosed)
