The Washington Capitals dropped their season-opening matchup with the New Jersey Devils 5-3 on Saturday night in large part due to the struggles of one of their four forward lines. The team’s third line, composed of Sonny Milano, Hendrix Lapierre, and Aliaksei Protas, was on the ice for three of New Jersey’s goals within their first three minutes of ice time together.
Head coach Spencer Carbery did not mince his words when speaking about the trio’s struggles postgame and acted quickly to rectify the issues at Monday’s practice. The second-year bench boss ran his team through line rushes at the skate, and the third line was the most noticeably different.
Lines
One of the biggest changes up front saw Jakub Vrana replace Milano on the left wing of the third line. Vrana’s inclusion likely sends Milano to the press box after the 28-year-old winger played a game-low 5:52 of ice time in the loss to New Jersey.
“Well, the third line struggled, so it’s as simple as that,” Carbery said. “I don’t need to go into the details of that. We’ve got to make a change on that third line to try to figure out a way to be able to deploy that line. It’s as easy as that.”
Vrana will get his first real game with Washington since April 11, 2021. He’ll dress against a team in the Vegas Golden Knights that he has dominated for the Caps previously in his career. While with Washington, Vrana has six points (2g, 4a) in his last four games against Vegas. He also scored a clutch goal against the Golden Knights in Game 5 of the 2018 Stanley Cup Final, which helped seal Washington’s first-ever championship.
Milano comes out after a rough preseason during which Carbery directly challenged him to ramp up his game heading into the regular season. Andrew Mangiapane completes the line, leaving Lapierre down the middle as its only constant.
Mangiapane comes down from the first line after Alex Ovechkin was moved to the right wing of the top trio, with Aliaksei Protas jumping up into the top six. Carbery expressed confidence that Mangiapane can be a stabilizing factor for the young Lapierre and the struggling line in general.
“Reliability to me,” Carbery said. “It helps Lappy out. We had concerns on that line in the offseason, and coming into camp, it was always on my radar, and unfortunately, it played out the way that we had feared of having a tough night opening night. You wish that doesn’t happen, or you hope that doesn’t happen for those guys. It’s a little bit of bad luck goes into that. They’re wrong place, wrong time, couldn’t get a break.
“But at the same time, we’ve got to find a way to — Lappy has to help himself, but we also need to insulate him, and as a staff, we’ve got to find some guys that can help him be productive and play a solid game.”
Gettin' into the swing of things#ALLCAPS | @MedStarHealth pic.twitter.com/ZvPKs1zt3U
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Another major change comes on the back end, as Dylan McIlrath will fill in for the injured Matt Roy. The choice of McIlrath over Alex Alexeyev seemingly came down to handedness.
“Right shot,” Carbery said. “Matt Roy’s going to miss some time, so right shot, keep the lefty-righty is a big part of it. It’s not the be-all-end-all, but a big part of it.”
Carbery will also make a change in net as Logan Thompson is set to take on the Golden Knights, his former team. Thompson played all 103 games of his NHL career with Vegas before being dealt to Washington for two draft picks at the 2024 NHL Draft in June.
Puck drop against Vegas is set for 7 pm inside Capital One Arena. The Golden Knights have been red hot to start the season, winning all three of their games so far. They last played on Sunday, beating the Anaheim Ducks 3-1.
