ARLINGTON, VA — The Washington Capitals have yet to win in the shootout this season, losing all four of their games that have gone past overtime. After falling to the Carolina Hurricanes on Thursday night, the Capitals now have a 6-12 record in the shootout since head coach Spencer Carbery joined the team in 2023-24. And though the Caps brought Oshie in as a consultant last season, the end results haven’t changed.
Carbery seemed to reach a breaking point after a loss to the Carolina Hurricanes, telling reporters postgame that the game was “probably the last straw” for the team’s current shootout lineup. On Friday morning, Carbery spent close to 10 minutes delving into the Capitals’ shootout strategy, discussing several ideas the coaching staff had considered to address a major weakness.
Changing the shootout lineup
This is the most obvious fix, and the one Carbery touched on Thursday night. The Capitals have stuck with Dylan Strome and Anthony Beauvillier as two of their three shooters, with a rotating cast of characters filling the third spot (and additional rounds when necessary). Carbery named Tom Wilson, Aliaksei Protas, and Jakob Chychrun after Thursday’s loss as potential new faces the Capitals could try, and he added Justin Sourdif’s name to the list of possibilities after seeing him practice shootout moves on Friday.
“It’s really tricky, hard, because we just actually just came from chatting about (the shootout),” Carbery said. “Because you’re watching some different players that haven’t been shooters for you in the past. For example, talking to Justin Sourdif, he’s shot twice in his pro career. Used to shoot in junior, was really good, is 0-for-2 in the American Hockey League. But you don’t know until you get an opportunity. And sometimes you get an opportunity and you get hot.”
Still, Carbery noted that the transition to less-experienced shooters would carry risk, especially with more seemingly-obvious options in the lineup.
“It’s not an easy thing to just go, ‘All right, let’s start shooting Joe Smith,’” he said. “Because you’ve got guys that have done it in their career currently on the roster. You’ve got guys that have produced at a high level that are leading your team in scoring. So that would be your (baseline).
“You would use those guys. ‘Oh, they’re your top power-play scoring guys.’ But you want to get a look at some guys, and so that’s what we did today. And we’ll talk about it, think about it, and have a plan in place for if the next shootout comes.”
Practicing on a left-catching goaltender
Just six of the 81 goaltenders in the NHL this season are right-handed catchers, but that short list includes both Logan Thompson and Charlie Lindgren. The Capitals can work on the shootout during practice, but moves that succeed against their tandem may not always work on a left-catching goalie, and vice versa.
That doesn’t mean the Capitals have fared better against righties, however: Carolina Hurricanes goaltender Brandon Bussi, who stopped all three of Washington’s shootout attempts on Thursday, also catches right.
Carbery said that former Cap Andrew Mangiapane had joked about the effect of right-catching goalies in the shootout during his time in DC last season.
“Andrew Mangiapane brought that exact thing up,” Carbery said. “It’s very funny — as you guys have gotten to know (him), great personality — he goes, ‘That would have worked against a regular-catching goalie.’ I had a really good chuckle. ‘My move would have worked.’”
For that reason, the Capitals spent Friday practicing their shootout moves not on an NHL goaltender, but on longtime practice goalie Parker Milner (who also served as Washington’s emergency backup last week). Using Milner allowed the Caps to experiment against a left-catching goalie more similar to most of their opponents, albeit with a much lower skill level.
Carbery told reporters he didn’t think goaltender handedness played too much of a factor in the Capitals’ shootout woes, but he didn’t rule it out as a possibility.
“That’s why we’re using Parker Milner today to practice the shootout,” he said. “Do I think it affects us? No, but maybe there is a little bit there, that we don’t get to work on that in practice — and even in regular shots, we’re shooting on different-catching goalies. I don’t know.”
Pulling the goalie in overtime and other riskier plays
The best way for Washington to stop losing shootouts may be avoiding them altogether. Of the five Capitals games to go past regulation this season, just one ended in overtime, and it’s the only time the Caps have won.
Given the team’s record in the shootout, Carbery has deliberated adopting a more offensive approach to three-on-three overtime than face the skills competition.
“I have thought about this: if [the shootout isn’t] your strength, do you get more aggressive in overtime?” Carbery said. “Do you trade chances a little bit more?”
Carbery’s even gone so far as to consider pulling the goalie late in overtime. An extra skater could push the Capitals over the edge for the win, but if opponents score on the empty net, Washington would forfeit the point they’d normally earn for an OT loss.
In most cases, NHL teams have only gone empty net in overtime when there’s so little time on the clock that opponents couldn’t possibly score (as the LA Kings did in 2017) or they’re in such a tight playoff race that just one standings point wouldn’t be good enough (as the Minnesota Wild did twice in 2024).
The idea gained fame when Hockey Hall of Famer Sergei Fedorov used it multiple times while coaching the KHL’s CSKA Moscow, noting he was “not a fan of shootouts.” Unlike the NHL, KHL teams don’t risk forfeiting a standings point when they allow an empty-net goal against in overtime.
At this point, Carbery wasn’t quite ready to pull that trigger, but he didn’t dismiss the idea entirely.
“Do you even get as far outside the box as thinking about, if you can get that last possession, pulling the goalie?” Carbery pondered. “That’s a little bit excessive. But, I mean, if you’re really struggling in the shootout — pulling the goalie is to a next level — but to get more aggressive and potentially take some chances to try to end that in overtime, something to definitely consider, and I’ve thought a lot about that.”
One thing Carbery wasn’t tweaking? The goalies. Asked about the performances of Thompson and Lindgren, who have a shootout save percentage of 0.44 and 0.80, respectively, Carbery said he leaves that discussion to goaltending coach Scott Murray.
“I don’t go down that road,” he said with a sheepish grin. “That’s Scott Murray. I’ve talked to LT a little bit — I ask him more about what he sees in shooters, because I think you can get some really good insight from asking our goalies, who are really good shooters that they face, and who do they think would be really good in the shootout
“But I don’t go down the road of, ‘Hey, why did that go in?’ I don’t touch that.”
