Veteran Russian blueliner Dmitry Orlov re-joined his Capitals teammates in Seattle before their game against the Kraken on Thursday. The 31-year-old defender did not end up dressing for that matchup as he missed his twelfth straight game with a lower-body injury.
Orlov then stuck with the team as they headed east to Calgary for a Saturday meeting with the Flames. Caps head coach Peter Laviolette told The Atletic’s Tarik El-Bashir that Orlov will not play in that game either.
Orlov has not played since he skated just seven minutes against the Arizona Coyotes in a 3-2 loss on November 5. With one of their top, minute-eating defensemen out of the lineup, the Caps have been forced to get creative with their defensive pairings. It hasn’t exactly worked out for the best.
Regular third-pairing defender Erik Gustafsson has skated on the team’s top defensive unit with John Carlson for the majority of the games that Orlov has missed. In 149 minutes together at five-on-five, the Caps have been outscored 11 to 5 with that pairing on the ice. While they seem to control a lot of the puck with that duo out there (53.8% shot-attempt percentage), they also bleed high-danger chances (37 against).
With the Caps holding optional skates since their loss to the Kraken, it is unknown if anything will change in terms of those defense pairings or among the forward lines. Here is how they lined up in Seattle.
Ovechkin-Strome-Sheary
Milano-Kuznetsov-Oshie
Johansson-Eller-Mantha
Protas-Dowd-Hathaway
Gustafsson-Carlson
Fehervary-Jensen
Irwin-TVR
After their loss on Thursday, the Caps are now 1-2 to start their season-long road trip and still have won back-to-back games just three times this season.
“The one game I look back at recently (in a negative way) is the last one,” Laviolette told El-Bashir on Saturday. “Of the previous four or five games, I felt like we were pushing the game and pushing a little bit more than the opponent.
“It wasn’t horrible but it was enough where we were playing their game, trying to keep them out of our end, trying to get the puck back,” he continued. “We have to get back to the style of the previous handful of games where we were really pushing what we want to do on the ice.”
The Flames will come into Saturday night’s action in a similar middling form to the Caps. Calgary is 5-4-1 in their last ten games, got shut out by the Caps on November 25, and lost their last game to the Montreal Canadiens 2-1.
According to TSN’s Salim Nadim Valji, starting in net for the Pacific Division’s fifth-placed squad will be their backup Dan Vladar.
Vladar has a very, very poor personal history against the Capitals. In three career games against the Caps, he holds a 1-2 record with a 4.97 goals-against average and a .821 save percentage. His 15 goals against in those games are the most he has given up to any one team in his career.
Correction: This post previously had Orlov missing his twelfth-straight game when in fact it is his thirteenth out of the lineup.
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
