ARLINGTON, VA — The Washington Capitals will face the Dallas Stars on Thursday for the final night of their three-game homestand to open the season. After earning their first win of the season against the Vegas Golden Knights, the Caps will run nearly the same group against the Stars.
Though Thursday morning’s skate was optional, head coach Spencer Carbery confirmed afterwards that the team planned to run the same lines against Dallas, with Charlie Lindgren stepping back in net.
Lines
Carbery told reporters earlier in the week that he planned to get both Lindgren and Thompson significant time in net to start the year, though he didn’t commit to how he would split the starts.
“We’re just going to play it by ear and try to get both guys as involved as possible, especially early in the season,” he said then. “Get them both playing. I don’t think there’s going to be a set plan alternating, but we’ll just continue to try to get them involved moving forward.”
After keeping nearly the same lines and pairings through training camp, Carbery shook up the lineup after the Caps fell to the Devils in their home opener, swapping Sonny Milano out for Jakub Vrana, flipping Ovechkin to the right wing, moving Aliaksei Protas up to the top line, and dropping Andrew Mangiapane down to the third line. Those changes paid off against the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday when Vrana and Protas each scored a goal, assisted by Mangiapane and Ovechkin, respectively.
Washington will face a Dallas Stars team that has gone 4-0-0 to start the season, allowing just five goals in that span. After struggling to score for much of the 2023-24 season, the Capitals have shown more of an offensive spark this fall — they’ve tallied 7 goals in their two games so far, something it took them five games to do last season. Carbery praised the team’s offense both on and off the scoresheet.
“We’re still building and there’s still a ton of room for growth, but we’re seeing some of the things that we’ve tried to implement and tried to talk about and tried to hit the ground running with,” he said Wednesday. “Because that was one of the biggest challenges last year for us: we were always trying to catch up to get going offensively and to try to get a little bit more momentum and have some guys feeling good about themselves.
“I remember, we talked about this as staff, I remember saying this last year, and I might have even said it in the media, I felt like we had 20 guys that were completely snake-bitten. Just couldn’t buy one early on in the season. So anytime you score some goals and guys are feeling good about it — and we’re generating a bunch of chances, too. And that’s the most important part. Finishing is extremely important, but generating a bunch of quality looks, which we didn’t do as good of a job in the first game, but in the second game [we did]. So we’re just going to try to build off that.”
As the Caps prepare to go up against both a strong defense and a dangerous offense on Thursday, they’ll need that offensive spark once again. Puck drop is set for 7 pm at Capital One Arena.
