The Washington Capitals’ never-say-die attitude in their last-minute win against the Los Angeles Kings on Sunday was perhaps best personified by the play of the team’s fourth line. In a contest that ended 4-3 in regulation, Nic Dowd, Beck Malenstyn, and Nicolas Aube-Kubel were on the ice at five-on-five for three of the Capitals’ goals and none of LA’s.
The trio’s combination of speed and grit proved too much for LA to handle which has been the case this season for a lot of teams playing against Washington — despite the line’s very uneven process stats.
After the game, head coach Spencer Carbery and a slew of Capitals players were asked about what makes the line so successful and how they were able to help create John Carlson’s game-winning goal with just 53 seconds left in the third period.
Scoring the game-winning goal seems like an All-Star thing to do#NHLAllStarVote | John Carlson pic.twitter.com/5gH34WJFbi
— Washington Capitals (@Capitals) January 7, 2024
“I love what Nic Dowd’s line does there, driving the puck down into the offensive zone and doesn’t just settle to just hold it,” Carbery said. “There’s a couple plays to be made there and they made them. Dowder does a great job on the flash screen and Johnny Carlson delivered the puck.”
Carlson’s goal that sank LA was just one of 13 that the Capitals have scored at five-on-five with Dowd, Malenstyn, and Aube-Kubel on the ice this season. In those same 248-plus minutes, the Capitals have given up just four goals.
All of that great work has been done while the three sport offensive-zone start percentages under nine percent. Through 38 games, Beck Malenstyn has started just 15 of his shifts in the offensive zone. And, the vast majority of those shifts have come against opposition top lines.
“They have like 10 O-zone starts maybe the whole entire year,” Dylan Strome said. “For them to help out like that, not just tonight but most nights, they’re a great line and they mesh well with each other.”
“They show up to the rink and they know what they’re getting every single night and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel,” Carlson said. “They’re grinding and not just the goals. They wear a lot of teams down with the style that they play, the physicality. There are unbelievable players that they shut down and when you can chip in the offense like they have been, it’s a huge plus for the team.”
While Dowd, the elder statesman on the line at 33-years-old, has played in a similar role for the Capitals before, he is getting even more responsibility from Carbery. His 15:48 of average ice time per game is more than a full minute more of average playing time than his previous career high set back during the 2020-21 campaign (14:22).
Dowd was asked why he thinks his combination with Malenstyn and NAK works so well and why they’ve earned that type of opportunity from the team’s coaching staff this season.
“Speed,” Dowd said. “I’m certainly okay playing underneath and playing defense and being a safety valve. That allows those two to get going, get up ice, cause turnovers on the forecheck, and then I can try to get myself up there and make plays in the O-zone. That’s what you saw tonight. You see that on the last goal. You get a faceoff, it gets messed up a bit, we transition out of the zone, and we get to go play offense. That’s what makes our line successful.”
While they are riding an above 15-percent shooting percentage and seeing Capitals goaltenders saving 96.7 percent of the shots in those minutes, there is no debate that the line has found ways to make their incredibly tough assignments work so far this year outside of just the luck factor. Carbery called them the team’s most consistent forward unit from an overall two-way perspective on Sunday.
“If you look at the production, [Connor McMichael’s line],” Carbery said. “But, when it comes to matchups, looking after the best players in the National Hockey League, and then also chipping in a little bit you can’t argue with what that [fourth] line has been able to do. For those guys to be thriving in a role where you’re playing against the Adrian Kempes and Anze Kopitars of the world on a nightly basis and then adding production to be plus players, they’ve done a tremendous job for us.”
Dowd’s line received a healthy dose of their five-on-five ice time, almost seven minutes of it, in a direct matchup against Kopitar’s line. In that time, the Capitals held positive differentials in shot attempts (+3), scoring chances (+5), and high-danger chances (+2). The Capitals did not give up a single scoring chance or high-danger chance in that direct matchup.
“You’re shutting down the other team’s top line when you’re contributing offensively because then those three guys don’t have the puck and they don’t get to go play in your zone,” Dowd said. “Worst case scenario you get tasked with playing defense for 60 minutes and eventually they’re going to break you down because they’re really good players. The longer we can keep the puck out of their hands and make them play defense, we’ll tend to be more successful than if we’re playing in our D-zone.”
“Since the beginning of the year we’ve had one goal in mind to shut other lines down,” Aube-Kubel said. “Lately, it just clicks. I think we’re rolling. Dowder’s pretty hot, scores a lot. Just doing all the small little details and ends up in the back of their net… In our zone it’s just so easy to play with [Dowd]. Me and Mal are just on a train track up and down trying to play our wings. He talks so much on the ice it helps all five of us.”
The line’s superb results even have Carbery second guessing how he has deployed them so ultra-defensively this season. With the team in a constant struggle for more goals, the rookie bench boss sounded tempted to ride the hot hand a bit and give the line more chances to add offense.
There are a grand total of two Capitals, Aliaksei Protas (17) and Anthony Mantha (14), that have more five-on-five points this season than Aube-Kubel (11). Dowd (10) and Malenstyn (9) both follow right behind NAK in the top 10.
“I think moving forward we’ve gotta balance some things out from a production standpoint,” Carbery said. “I don’t think we can just strictly go [Ovechkin], [Kuznetsov], [Strome] – O-zone draw. We’ve gotta mix some guys in. They are pushing the envelope to where they deserve that or have earned that.”
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
