There’s no clear number one goaltender so far in Washington, since the start of the season, the Capitals have been alternating between former Montreal Canadiens’ goaltender Charlie Lindgren and Logan Thompson. Since the latter was in net on Tuesday night, the former should be taking on Montreal tonight.
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The 30-year-old netminder was never drafted into the NHL but when he graduated from St. Cloud’s in the NCAA, he signed a contract with the Canadiens and had an impressive start, winning his first three NHL starts with a save percentage of .940, which set unrealistic expectations unfortunately for the netminder.
At the end of his third contract, Lindgren was allowed to walk away as an unrestricted free agent and he landed in St. Louis for a year, before moving on to the Capitals on a three-year deal giving him $1.1 M per season. Now in a contract year, the netminder has got a 2-2-0 record so far with a 2.52 goals-against average and a .895 SP.
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The Canadiens come to town with co second place goal scorer in the league Cole Caufield who’s put up nine goals in 10 games so far this season, but a lot of questions in net. Now without veteran goalie Jake Allen, the Canadiens have put all their chips on the Samuel Montembeault and Cayden Primeau tandem. While Montembeault had a great game to start the year, he reached rock-bottom Tuesday night, giving up five goals on just 10 shots.
Yesterday at practice, the goaltender was put through his paces with a lot of deflected and through traffic shots to handle. Speaking to the media after the morning session, Martin St-Louis said he had yet to chose who would be manning the net tonight. The pre-game skate is scheduled for 10:30 AM this morning and we should have a better idea of any lineup changes by then.
Montembeault and Primeau have rough numbers against tonight’s opponent. The former has faced Washington five times and has a 2-2-0 record with a 3.34 goals-against average and a .895 save percentage. As for the latter, he’s only had one start against them which he loss surrendering four goals on 14 shots for a 9.49 GAA and a .714 SP.
As for the Caps’ goaltenders, Logan Thompson has never faced the Canadiens and Lindgren has taken on his former team three times. He has a 2-1-0 record to show for it with a 2.70 GAA and a .908 SP.
Up front, the pilot decided to mix things up a bit with three of his four lines being altered at practice yesterday:
Emil Heineman – Nick Suzuki – Cole Caufield
Juraj Slafkovsky – Kirby Dach – Oliver Kapanen
Alex Newhook – Christian Dvorak – Joel Armia
Josh Anderson – Jake Evans – Brendan Gallagher
These new lines are interesting, it would finally give Heineman a real opportunity offensively speaking as he wouldn’t be saddled with Dvorak who really is struggling so far this season. As for the Slafkovsky and Dach combination, it looked brilliant a year ago and clearly, the training staff would like to rekindle that magic. Could be a tough one for the third line though as all of the players on it have been struggling to an extent. On the back end, his pairs were as follows:
Lane Hutson – David Savard
Mike Matheson – Justin Barron
Kaiden Guhle – Jayden Struble
Arber Xhekaj – Logan Mailloux
There’s no telling what will stick for tonight’s game, but this sure looked like changes could be expected on defense, a feeling that was confirmed when Mailloux was sent back down to Laval. It would therefore make sense for Xhekaj to be the odd man out tonight since he was skating with the demoted Mailloux yesterday. Yes, Tom Wilson is in the Capitals’ lineup, but so far this season, he’s only taken two minor penalties. This seems to indicate both Guhle and Barron could be back. It will be interesting to see if Jakob Chychrun will be in the lineup for the Capitals as he left the last game and if Matt Roy could be ready to return.
Having had the benefit of going over the tape of the game against the Seattle Kraken, the bench boss insisted his team wasn’t dominated by the Washington state outfit on Tuesday night. For him, his young charges needs to mature and stop helping the opponent. Asked what he meant by that, the coach clarified saying his players have to be ready for faceoffs, stop taking bad penalties and be efficient in shot blocking.
Unsurprisingly, the Capitals’ most productive forward against the Canadiens is Alexander Ovechkin who has 67 points in 58 career games against Montreal, defenseman John Carlsson also has a respectable 24 points in 41 tilts. Pierre-Luc Dubois, who landed in Washington this off-season after his failed Los Angeles adventure, has 21 points in 24 duels against the Habs.
As for the Canadiens, the usual suspects are the most productive elements against the Caps, Caufield has eight points in as many games (including five goals) and Suzuki has 15 points (seven goals and eight assists) in 12 meetings. While the captain’s point streak came to a grinding halt on Tuesday night, Caufield will be looking for a fourth goal in as many games.
Montreal and Washington have faced each other 180 times so far and the Canadiens have a 83-71-17-9 record against tonight’s hosts. The Capitals have won six of the last 10 meetings between the two sides including the last one by a score of 4-3 last February. Tonight will be the first of this season’s three games between the Eastern Conference rivals.
The puck drop is set for 7:00 PM and whatever happens, it will be your chance to follow Alexander Ovechkin’s race to Wayne Gretzky’s goal record.
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