ARLINGTON, Va. — A few days ago, speaking before Game 4 of his team’s Stanley Cup playoff series against the Carolina Hurricanes, Washington Capitals coach Spencer Carbery was asked about making lineup changes.
At the time, Washington was down 2-1 but with less of a foothold than that suggested; winning a series when you have the puck as infrequently as the Capitals in the first three games is a tough hill to climb.
So, naturally, Carbery was open to mixing things up … with a caveat.
“The tricky part of that is those guys have been together all year long, essentially,” Carbery said. “So (if) you’re tinkering with things this time of year, you have to be careful. You want to make adjustments, but you don’t want to go overboard to do something that the group is completely uncomfortable with and haven’t utilized through 90-whatever games we’ve played this year.”
Sounds pretty close to “let’s wait and see” — and, indeed, during a 5-2 Game 4 loss to the Hurricanes, the Capitals waited and saw. If Wednesday’s practice lines hold, big changes to the forward group for Thursday’s Game 5 are on the way.
The clock is ticking on Washington’s season. As The Athletic’s Murat Ates noted from Winnipeg, teams down 3-1 have gone on to win 32 out of 352 NHL playoff series, a 9.1 percent success rate. The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn’s in-house model gives the Capitals a 7 percent chance of completing the comeback. The odds of flipping a coin and getting heads four times in a row is 6.25.
If Washington pulls it off, it’ll almost certainly be because the new-look lines pay off. Here’s more on what that’d entail, along with a few other elements that’d help the Capitals start to dig out from the 3-1 hole.
McMike check
The forward lines from Wednesday’s practice are as follows:
| Left wing | Center | Right wing |
|---|---|---|
|
Ethen Frank* |
Dylan Strome |
Anthony Beauvillier |
|
Aliaksei Protas |
Pierre-Luc Dubois |
Tom Wilson |
|
Andrew Mangiapane |
Connor McMichael |
Ryan Leonard |
|
Brandon Duhaime |
Nic Dowd |
Taylor Raddysh |
*-Placeholder for Alex Ovechkin, who had a maintenance day
The biggest change is Connor McMichael moving off the left wing with Pierre-Luc Dubois and Tom Wilson and centering the third line in Lars Eller’s place. The third line, with Eller in the middle, has been ineffective against Carolina, with Ryan Leonard getting scratched for Game 3 and returning for Game 4.
Overall, in 13 minutes, 7 seconds together at five-on-five, Andrew Mangiapane-Eller-Leonard lost in shot attempts 20-6, shots on goal 10-2 and high-danger chances 10-2, and controlled an abysmal 17 percent of the expected goal share. On top of that, in Game 4, misplays by Eller and Leonard in the defensive zone helped set the table for a back-breaking goal by Carolina’s Taylor Hall. Not a sustainable situation.
Replacing Eller with McMichael makes sense because it gives the third line a puncher’s chance to actually drive offense. McMichael was second on the team in individual expected goals per 60 minutes in the regular season with 1.24. Eller was 14th with 0.71, and his play has also fallen off dramatically in the postseason; 0.14 expected goals per 60 is 17th on the Capitals, ahead of only defensemen Matt Roy and Trevor van Riemsdyk.
McMichael, meanwhile, has continued showing an ability to create scoring chances. It’s been on the wing, of course, but McMichael played down the middle basically until solidifying his spot on the Capitals’ roster.
“I think it’s going to be pretty seamless for me,” McMichael said. “It’s something even in practice a few times this year, I jumped in line rushes up the middle, just to stay fresh. So I think I’ll be good.”
Mangiapane and Leonard have more to offer offensively, too. The former scored 35 goals a few years ago for the Calgary Flames, and Carbery has consistently praised the latter’s play with the puck on his stick. Having McMichael should give both more opportunities.
“(Putting him at center is) no different than putting him at left wing or right wing,” Carbery said of McMichael. “He’s a good hockey player. He helps us in a lot of different areas. Penalty kill, power play, his pace of play. When he’s using his feet, his quickness to evade big, long defenders. He’s a good player for us.”
Another goal from Ovechkin (or some puck luck)
From a chance-generation standpoint, the two games in Carolina were actually great for Ovechkin. He clocked in at more than three expected all-situations goals per 60, more than double his rate in the regular season, scoring once on the power play in the third period of Game 4. Washington needs more cash-ins from him, especially as most of the rest of its skaters struggle to generate those sorts of opportunities.
The Capitals almost certainly aren’t going to win Ovechkin’s minutes in terms of shot share or expected goals. That’s fine. What makes him (and Strome) an effective first-line forward is his ability to put the chances he does get into the net at an impressive rate. If Ovechkin and Strome are scoring, all is well. If they’re not, Washington is going to struggle.
“It’s not like there’s one recipe that’s gonna solve (Hurricanes goaltender Frederik Andersen),” Strome said. “We’ve got to get Grade-A chances, and we gotta bear down. We’ve had lots of chances in the first period in the last couple games and we haven’t put them in.”
As a team, the Capitals have done a good job of closing the gap in all-situations high-danger chances we saw in Game 1. In Game 2, Carolina held an 11-10 edge. Game 3 was 14-13 Capitals, and Game 4 was 10-6 Capitals. Probably not as lopsided as you’d guessed. The Capitals are taking solace in that, even as the time left to wait on puck luck runs short.
“Just staying on it and staying with it. You know they’ll start to go,” Wilson said. “Sometimes that’s the way it goes in hockey. It’s hard to score goals.”
Top-end Thompson
This is the biggest one. It’s going to sound like a cop-out — because of course every team wants their goalie to be at his best — but that goes double for Washington and Logan Thompson. We’re not going to harp on the shot-attempt disparity here, partially because Washington has gradually closed that a bit as the series has gone on, but Carolina is still almost certain to control the puck for a larger chunk of time than the Capitals. Thompson, as was the case in Game 2, needs to be the eraser.
There are plenty of reasons to think he’s capable. One: He’s playing at home. Japers’ Rink pointed all this out, but it bears repeating: In five playoff games at Capital One Arena, Thompson has a .954 save percentage and 10.6 goals saved above expectations. On the road, he’s at .872 and 4.5 goals above expectations (more than one per game, on average).
That’s a major, major gap, and it’s not one you can explain away with “well, the Capitals are winning the tactical battle because they have last change.” They’re not. They’re allowing nearly half an expected goal per game more (3.46 vs. 2.95) at home. Thompson is the variable.
That’s not to say he’s the reason they went 0-for-2 in Carolina, either. He was fine — and chasing multi-goal leads for most of the third period in Game 5 had an effect. By Strome’s count, they allowed five two-on-ones down the stretch in the Hurricanes’ 5-2 win.
“We can’t leave him out to dry like that,” Strome said. “We’ve got full confidence in him and what he has to do, and he’s done it all year. He did in the first round. He’s done it in this round. And I expect no different in Game 5.”
How often Carbery calls Thompson “a gamer” has turned into a running joke over the last few weeks, so on Wednesday, he made a conscious effort to switch it up.
“These moments when chips are in the middle of the table and our season’s on the line, he’s a pretty safe bet,” Carbery said. “He’s a pretty safe bet because you know he’s going to lay absolutely everything he’s got on the line for his teammates. He wants to win as bad as anybody in our room, so I’ve got a lot of confidence.”
(Photo of Alex Ovechkin: Grant Halverson / Getty Images)