ARLINGTON, VA — The Washington Capitals’ alternating goaltender rotation could be coming to an end. Logan Thompson will be back in net against the Detroit Red Wings Tuesday night, starting in consecutive games for the fourth time in the past 20 games while Charlie Lindgren watches from the bench.
Though the team has maintained a strict pattern of swapping between goalies for most of the season, head coach Spencer Carbery says the Caps are switching to a different strategy as they get closer to the playoffs.
“Yeah, [mixing up starts is] something that we’ve talked about,” he said Tuesday morning. “Nothing’s set in stone, but we want to have a good process to what we’re doing goaltender-wise and so not just going back and forth and flipping every single game. I don’t think you’ll see that the rest of the way. We’ll look at each independent game separately and see who’s going to start. But yeah, we want to be as diligent as possible as a staff of making sure that we’re setting the group up for success and finding out what our goalie rotation looks like.”
Carbery had already begun to loosen up on the alternating pattern since Lindgren missed time with an upper-body injury in mid-January. Thompson put up nine periods of shutout hockey while Lindgren was injured, leading Carbery to start him in two more games once Lindgren returned. The goaltending rotation stayed looser even once Lindgren got back in net, with Tuesday marking the fifth time since then that Carbery has given a goalie consecutive starts.
Thompson has proven one of the best netminders in the NHL this season. Among goaltenders with 20 or more games played, Thompson ranks second in goals saved above expected (28.7, per MoneyPuck), fourth in goals against average (2.32), and fifth in save percentage (.916), holding a record of 29-4-5. Lindgren, meanwhile, has put up a still-respectable but less showstopping record of 30-15-11 this season with 0.5 goals saved above expected, a 2.65 goals against average, and a .899 save percentage.
While Carbery planned to adopt a game-by-game strategy for the rest of the regular season, he admitted he was still mulling over his plans for the playoffs. He highlighted the difficulties in balancing the tandem’s success thus far with the benefits of a consistent starter down the stretch.
“Thought a lot about it,” he said. And I’ll be honest with you, I don’t have an answer for that right now. I think the easiest answer to it would be, you’d like to have one guy. But we have two guys that are very capable. And so that sometimes actually muddies the water a little bit and will put you in some situations where it’s my job and our staff’s job to potentially make some tough decisions that will be criticized and looked at. But that’s — maybe the way I could describe it is a blessing and a curse, of having to make those decisions”
Carbery noted his goaltenders’ similarities to Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman, who served as a tandem for the Boston Bruins from 2021 to 2024. After that pair backstopped the Bruins to a record-breaking regular season in 2022-23, Ullmark played six of seven playoff games as the Florida Panthers pulled off an eighth-seed upset in the first round. Boston made past the first round in 2024 with Swayman as their postseason starter, but fell to Florida once again in the second round.
To Carbery, those seasons in Boston offered valuable insight as he looked to manage a successful tandem of his own.
“You saw it, prime example that I look back on is the Boston situation with Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman and how they handled that,” he said. “So I learned a lot from that situation and watching it and observing, how you handle that, two excellent goaltenders that had phenomenal seasons.
“So yeah, I don’t think there’s a right answer to the way, a cookie-cutter way to handle when you have two really, really quality goaltenders. But we’ll be digging into that decision-making process and making sure we’re doing everything we can to make good decisions when it comes to who’s starting in net.”
Both Thompson and Lindgren are set to remain in Washington long-term after signing a pair of extensions just over a month apart from each other. Thompson’s deal will see him make $5.85 million for the next six years, while Lindgren signed a three-year contract worth $3 million per season.
