After its 5-1 loss to the New Jersey Devils, the Washington Capitals hopped on a plane and headed west for four games against Western Conference opponents. The Caps will look to bounce back from their lopsided defeat as they continue their season-long road trip.
Their first opponent will be Bruce Boudreau’s Vancouver Canucks. The Caps got on the ice for practice Monday inside Vancouver’s Rogers Arena.
The line rushes at the skate indicate that head coach Peter Laviolette has declined to make any changes to the lineup that took the ice against the Devils..
Here is a reminder of how that looked via the Washington Post’s Samantha Pell.
Ovechkin-Strome-Sheary
Milano-Kuznetsov-Oshie
Johansson-Eller-Mantha
Protas-Dowd-Hathaway
Gustafsson-Carlson
Fehervary-Jensen
Irwin-TVR
The forward group did not manage to get on the board against the Devils on Saturday but the team did put together one of their better performances of the season when it comes to five-on-five metrics. They out-attempted New Jersey 60 to 33, out-scoring chanced them 34 to 19, and out-high danger chanced them 9 to 7.
A lot of that good work came from the top six as Laviolette and his staff was able to deploy the two offensive heavy lines almost exclusively in the offensive zone to start their shifts. Neither Strome nor Kuznetsov started a single shift in the defensive zone. By comparison, Lars Eller and Nic Dowd took nine total defensive zone faceoffs in the game.
The team’s defensive pairings were also unchanged. That means John Carlson sticks with Erik Gustafsson after the duo was on the ice for all three of Jack Hughes’s goals on Saturday.
Martin Fehervary and Nick Jensen were the Caps’ best pairing against the Devils. Although they received zero offensive zone shift starts, the team still out-attempted the Devils 21 to 8 and out-chanced them 11 to 3 in Fehervary’s 17:58 of five-on-five ice time.
One of the major unknowns with the team’s defense corps is the status of Dmitry Orlov. Orlov has now missed 10 straight games with a lower-body injury and has been on and off the ice at team practices since the injury. It is unclear if the Russian blueliner even made the trip west with the team.
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
