The Washington Capitals are squaring off against former bench boss Peter Laviolette for the first time on Saturday night when the New York Rangers come to town. Laviolette and the Capitals missed the postseason entirely in his last season in charge and the team overall had its worst full, 82-game season in 16 years.
Alongside Laviolette’s return to DC will come veteran forward TJ Oshie‘s return from an injury that has kept him out of the lineup for six games. Oshie recently commented on his return and expressed his feelings about the coaching change the organization decided to make this past offseason.
“It worked out great for us, kind of a reset, a new system that’s a little more friendly for our squad,” Oshie told NHL.com’s Tom Gulitti. “Obviously, we’d like some more goal scoring, but system-wise we adapted to that pretty good, I think. And they’re obviously having a good start over there.”
Laviolette currently has the Rangers atop the NHL in terms of points percentage and seven points ahead of the Philadelphia Flyers for the Metropolitan Division lead.
While that success is great for New York, it’s been made clear by a couple of Capitals players that the team believed they needed to move on from Laviolette. Oshie’s more tepid comments come on the back of longtime teammate Evgeny Kuznetsov being very forthright with his thoughts about Laviolette in a tell-all interview with a Russian outlet before Training Camp.
“It’s my personal opinion,” Kuznetsov said then. “It’s clear that maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s wrong…I don’t know… We had such central players: Backy, me, Strome, and Dowd. Lars Eller also. I think that with such central players it was possible, in principle, to come up with something: somehow more in the middle, try to hold the puck. But with us, everything is simple: to the red zone – and off we go (to forecheck).”
This season’s Capitals are currently 12-8-3 under new head coach Spencer Carbery and sputtering in their last several games. The team is 10 points back of the Rangers with one game in hand.
Oshie will come into Saturday’s game trying to be a boost for the team and trying to get back into the flow of the schedule after he had just scored his first goal of the season two nights prior to being taken out by injury. The Capitals activated him off injured reserve before the matchup and sent rookie forward Hendrix Lapierre down to the AHL’s Hershey Bears to fit him on the 23-man roster.
“It’s tough,” Oshie told Capitals senior reporter Mike Vogel on Saturday. “The injury was at maybe at the worst time, with the team going on a long road trip right after the match. It always sucks having to stay behind and watch the guys, but I thought I saw some very good play, and some instances where we’ve got to clean things up.
“I think we can be a little but more consistent, and not have those lapses of five to 10 minutes where a team really takes it to us, scores a couple of goals, or just builds a lot of momentum that is hard to come back from,” Oshie continued. “Special teams, I think we can do a little better there. But with a day off yesterday and a meeting this morning, and practice this morning, the boys look rejuvenated and ready to rock. It’ll be an exciting start.”
Saturday’s test against the Rangers is the beginning of an important stretch for the Capitals where 10 of their next 14 games come against Metropolitan Division teams. Over half of those 14 games will also come on the road.
Oshie was asked by Vogel if this portion of the schedule seems like it could be “make-or-break” for the team’s season aspirations.
“Yeah it does,” Oshie said. “Looking back a couple of months from now, we want to say we took advantage of this next stretch here. There are a lot of good teams out there, and when it comes down to the end, you want to be in the top eight.
“Points wise, it’s very important for us, I think. For me, not being in the last couple of games and just watching the team from a team standpoint, it’d be nice to get our game on track with how we want to play here in a full 60 [minutes], and really control the game. They’re obviously going to get their chances, but we want to have the momentum on our side as much as we can, especially in our home building.”
Puck drop for the game will come at 7 pm inside Capital One Arena. Charlie Lindgren will be in net for the Capitals as both Oshie and Sonny Milano jump back into the forward lines.
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
