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Charlie Lindgren to start against Flyers as Darcy Kuemper remains day-to-day with an upper-body injury

By Chris Cerullo

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December 7, 2022 12:55 pm

The Washington Capitals are almost home. The Caps have just one more game on their season-long road trip and it comes against the Philadelphia Flyers inside Wells Fargo Center on Wednesday night.

Normal backup goaltender, turned starter Charlie Lindgren will see action for the third game in a row. Hunter Shepard will be his backup as Darcy Kuemper remains out day-to-day with an upper-body injury.

Lindgren arrives in Philly after taking down the Edmonton Oilers for the second time this season. He stopped 28 of 30 shots and is now 3-3-3 with a 3.33 goals-against average and a .895 save percentage on the year.

The starting goalie news comes via The Athletic’s Tarik El-Bashir who also provided the team’s lines and defense pairings from their morning skate. Head coach Peter Laviolette is sticking with what worked in Edmonton as he made no changes.

Caps captain Alex Ovechkin has gone three games without a goal for just the third time so far this season. That doesn’t have a ton to do with his current linemates as the team’s top trio has actually formed fast chemistry since being united.

At five-on-five with Ovi, Dylan Strome, and Conor Sheary on the ice, the Caps have seen 51.7-percent of the shot attempts, 56-percent of the expected goals, 55.5-percent of the scoring chances, and 57.7-percent of the high-danger chances.

On the defense side of things, with Martin Fehervary still on injured reserve for at least two more games, the makeshift third pairing of Alex Alexeyev and Matt Irwin will stick together. The two played just under 9:30 of ice time together against Edmonton at five-on-five.

The Flyers are one of just two teams currently below the Capitals in the Metropolitan Division. They are coming off a recent ten-game winless streak that just ended on November 29. Even with that, they are just three points behind the Caps in the standings with a game in hand.

Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB

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