The Washington Capitals made the trip down the East Coast after practice on Friday to take on the Tampa Bay Lightning. Washington is looking to win their sixth straight game early in the 2024-25 campaign and continue their best start to a season in nine years.
After Logan Thompson manned Washington’s net in their 6-3 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday, head coach Spencer Carbery tapped Charlie Lindgren for the start against Tampa Bay on Saturday night. Per The Washington Post’s Bailey Johnson, Lindgren was the first netminder off the ice at the team’s morning skate.
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Carbery has split starts for his two goaltenders right down the middle this season, giving each player three of the first six games. He expanded on the reasoning for the even share during a radio spot with the Sports Junkies on Friday.
“We didn’t come in and say we are going to, for sure, do this,” Carbery said. “It’s just worked out that way. We came in with a plan of this: we wanted to get both guys involved early in the season. We didn’t want one guy playing eight and one guy playing two. We wanted it to be ideally 5-5, 6-4, something like that, where both guys were heavily involved through the first stretch of the season, and see where it goes from there.
“I know guys want to play – and you appreciate that about goaltenders, of wanting the net, wanting to start 50 games in an 82-game schedule. But for us as coaches, when both guys are playing well and staying involved, that helps our team as a whole, and it gives us a good chance to win on a back-to-back and a heavy schedule with travel. We feel like it’s a good scenario right now, and we’ll keep going with that until we feel like we need to adjust the plan.”
The early baseline statistics show that Lindgren is performing better than Thompson despite Thompson not losing a decision yet this season. Lindgren is 2-1 through three starts with a 2.36 goals-against average and a .905 save percentage. Thompson is 3-0 with a 3.28 goals-against average and a .884 save percentage.
However, per MoneyPuck, both goalies are slightly below water regarding goals saved above expected. Thompson has allowed 0.1 more goals than expected, while Lindgren has allowed 0.9 more.
Lindgren has been tremendous in four prior games against the Lightning in his career. In those appearances, he is 2-0-1 with a 1.84 goals-against average and a .937 save percentage. He’ll have the tough task of slowing down a Lightning offense averaging four goals per game early this year, featuring the league’s top goal scorer, Nikita Kucherov (8 goals).
Puck drop is set for 7 pm tonight, and Joe Beninati and Craig Laughlin will be on the call for the first time in a week. Tampa Bay is 4-3 to start the year, losing their last game 4-2 to the Minnesota Wild.
