Who: Washington Capitals (7-5-1, 15 points, 4th place Metropolitan Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (8-3-2, 18 points, 2nd place Metropolitan Division)
How to Watch: Exclusively on ESPN+ and Hulu
Pens’ Path Ahead: Today starts a stretch of three games in four days prior to going out to Sweden. The next two games will be afternoon weekend games, next up is Saturday in New Jersey (12:30pm eastern start) and after that the Pens return to Pittsburgh for a Sunday afternoon game (2:00pm, but don’t worry the Steelers play the night game) against LA. Then it’s time to head overseas to play Nashville twice in Stockholm, starting next Friday the 14th.
Opponent Track: The Caps earned a big 6-1 win at home against St. Louis last night in a game that featured goal No. 900 for Alex Ovechkin. They needed all of that; after starting the year a solid 6-2-0, Washington got smacked 7-1 by Ottawa on October 25th and went through a 0-3-1 prior to last night.
Season Series: Unfortunately this is the year where the Pens/Caps only meet three times. That’s a problem that be solved in future seasons by going to 84 games starting in 2026-27, ensuring all division opponents play four games. After this, the two won’t play again until a home-and-home on April 11+12. Last season the rivals split the series, each going 2-2-0.
Hidden Stat: Tonight will be the 74th all-time meeting of Crosby/Ovechkin in the regular season. The Pens boast a 42-27-4 record, Crosby has 95 points (33 goals, 62 assists) to Ovechkin’s 68 points (38 goals, 30 assists).
Getting to know the Capitals
Alex Ovechkin – Dylan Strome – Anthony Beauvillier
Aliaksei Protas – Connor McMichael – Tom Wilson
Sonny Milano – Hendrix Lapierre – Ryan Leonard
Brandon Duhaime – Nic Dowd – Justin Sourdif
Martin Fehervary / John Carlson
Jakob Chychrun / Matt Roy
Rasmus Sandin / Trevor van Riemsdyk
Goalies: Charlie Lindgren and Logan Thompson (the latter playing last night against STL)
Potential scratches: Pierre-Luc Dubois, Spencer Smallman, Declan Chisholm, Dylan McIlrath
Injured reserve: Ethen Frank
- Washington got Sandin back in the lineup after missing five games, but Dubois is expected to be out for a while. That leaves a big hole down the middle
- The Caps gave up a second round pick to grab 23-year old Justin Sourdif from Florida. That raised an eyebrow, being as the former third round pick had only appeared in four NHL games prior to this season. Clearly they see some potential upside there where an opportunity to play could result in a pretty decent player.
Season stats
via hockeydb
Note: does not include last night’s game
- The Capitals have had good goalie/bad goalie splits so far this year, and the fortunate news for the Penguins is that the goalie playing well was used last night, so they could be looking at seeing Charlie Lindgren. Lindgren is only 1-3-0 in his career vs. PIT but does have .922 save% and 2.54 GAA career stats against the Pens.
- The absences of Dubois and briefly Strome have made for a big opportunity for 23-year old Hendrix Lapierre in something of a make or break season.
- Not downloading the updated stats this morning does Beauvillier a little dirty — he increased his goal count on the season from 1 to 3 during last night’s game against STL. Beauvillier has been a player Washington liked, they kept him instead of letting him become a free agent, but he does only have seven total goals in 41 games (playoff and regular season) with them. Beauvillier scored 13 goals in 61 games last season for the Pens. Of course, between speed, versatility of wing and role, forechecking, etc; Beauvillier’s value extends past scoring goals.
- Ovechkin had been sitting on goal No. 899 for a while, it’s nice that he won’t reach that milestone against the Pens and in Pittsburgh at that by getting his big milestone goal last night. You just knew he would have scored No. 900 tonight if he hadn’t gotten there yet..
The Capitals are hoping they have come out of an early season slump. Having key players like Dylan Strome, P-L Dubois and Rasmus Sandin out with injury hasn’t helped and might explain why a lot of their key metrics hit the skid right around when they went into the slump.
Ben Kindel – Sidney Crosby – Bryan Rust
Tommy Novak – Evgeni Malkin – Anthony Mantha
Philip Tomasino – Danton Heinen – Ville Koivunen
Connor Dewar – Blake Lizotte – Kevin Hayes/Filip Hallander
Parker Wotherspoon / Erik Karlsson
Ryan Graves / Connor Clifton
Goalies: Arturs Silovs and Sergei Murashov
Potential Scratches: Filip Hallander, Harrison Brunicke, Matt Dumba
IR: Noel Acciari, Tristan Jarry, Justin Brazeau, Jack St. Ivany, Rutger McGroarty, Joel Blomqvist, Rickard Rakell, Caleb Jones
- That’s a long ass injured reserve list.
- Tonight will figure to be the most reworked the forward lines have been all season; Crosby and Malkin will have new wingers debuting, Heinen will make his NHL season debut and Hayes could be in for his first game as well. Lots of changes all over the place, most notably by the ascension of Ben Kindel to the top line.
- Kindel has done well as a center, but given the injuries to Rakell/Brazeau and the ineffective production of Koivunen/Hallander in scoring line spots, the team was left with little other choice than to promote their 18-year old into the top six. Gotta have someone there with the potential to produce goals and points, and Kindel has shown the ability to light the lamp.
- The team could opt to use Dumba/Brunicke as their third pair tonight and put the latter into his 10th game of the season, but it appeared from practice that Graves and Clifton will be the next pair thrown into the fray as the team continues to search for competent and consistent play at the bottom of the lineup.
- Tonight would have been Silovs’ turn in the equal rotation of goalies, but now that a 21-year old with no NHL experience is the partner it will be interesting to see how the coaches handle that. Do they go right to Murashov on his first night? Keep Silovs in his routine and see how it goes for Saturday? Given that the Pens play Saturday and Sunday, it would seem likely Murashov will make his first NHL appearance before too much longer no matter how the decisions go.