The Washington Capitals control their destiny to make the playoffs with just two games remaining on their regular season schedule. With victories against the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers, the Caps would secure a spot in the postseason without any help from other teams.
The two games’ importance is obvious and the Capitals appear ready to acknowledge that by potentially sending out their number one netminder, Charlie Lindgren, for both games. Normally, Darcy Kuemper would receive one of the two starts but Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery wouldn’t commit to that after the team’s practice on Monday.
“One day at a time,” Carbery said when asked about his goaltending situation. He did confirm that Lindgren would start against the Bruins, at the least.
Lindgren getting both starts of a back-to-back isn’t without precedent as Carbery had him do just that earlier this season. In mid-January, the Capitals had a home-and-home, back-to-back against the New York Rangers and Lindgren was tasked to jump in net for both games.
In the two starts, the Capitals went 1-1, winning the first game at home 3-2 and dropping the second game in New York 2-1. Lindgren made 54 of 58 stops in the first time he has ever played both halves of a back-to-back in his NHL career.
“Obviously, I played a lot of back-to-backs in college and played a lot of back-to-backs in the American League,” Lindgren said then. “So for me, it was nothing really new. Found out shortly after the game last night, so I was able to just kind of wrap my head around it and recover that night and get ready for what was a big test today.”
Lindgren’s past success against the Rangers played a big factor in Carbery going back to him for the second start. He has similarly played well against both the Bruins and Flyers this year, shutting Boston out once and helping the Capitals beat Philadelphia 5-2 in their last matchup. He’ll come into Monday night’s game with a 23-16-7 record, a 2.77 goals-against average, a .909 save percentage, and five shutouts.
Kuemper has also been hard to trust this season. The veteran backstop has made just seven starts since the beginning of February and has not started more than six games in any month this season. The Capitals have won just 13 of his 30 total starts and his current 3.31 goals-against average and .890 save percentage are career lows.
Per MoneyPuck, Lindgren has stopped 8 goals more than expected this season, ranking 12th in the league among all goaltenders with at least 30 appearances. By comparison, Kuemper ranks 33rd (-4.8) in the same category.
