The Capitals had an outside chance of making the playoffs at the end of January; by the middle of April, they had made it, largely on the backs of performances by three players: Charlie Lindgren, John Carlson, and Alex Ovechkin. Now that the team is in the postseason, however, that previously stalwart trio has fallen off a bit (relatively speaking, in one case; less relatively in the others), at exactly the wrong time.
We’ll start with the guy who has been good but probably can (and definitely needs to be) better, and that’s Charlie Lindgren.
This is no shade to the job Lindgren’s done so far; he has made some huge saves already in this series, and hasn’t been bad. He hasn’t been the difference-maker he was down the stretch, though, and the one that the Caps frankly need him to be. Through two games, Lindgren has given up eight goals and posted the fourth-lowest save percentage among the 17 goalies who have played in the postseason so far, a less-than-stellar .864 – a far cry from his regular-season mark of .911.
Now, to be fair, most of the goals he’s given up so far have been goals you’d expect any goalie to give up. But perhaps a save here…
…or here…
…and maybe we’re talking about a slightly different series.
There’s no question that Lindgren is facing a ton of pressure, perhaps more than any other player in that room. And while he is an NHL veteran, this is his first taste of playoff hockey. To make your long-awaited postseason debut at the age of 30, and to do it as the starter for a team that desperately needs nothing less than the best to even extend their run…yeah, it’s a lot. And to be fair, two games is hardly enough to say he’s not up to the challenge, or that he can’t find another level and keep the high-octane Rangers’ offense from putting four on him a night – but he needs to do so quickly for the team to have a shot.
Of course, when the defense in front of him is decimated by injuries, maybe it’s unreasonable to expect superhuman performances from Lindgren. Or, for that matter, John Carlson, who logged huge minutes down the stretch in the regular season and continued to do so through the first two games of the playoffs…with very different results.
As we all discovered last season when he missed 42 games due to injury, Carlson is massively important to this lineup when everyone is healthy, and even more so when the blueline takes hits like it has with the absences of Rasmus Sandin and Nick Jensen. He was phenomenal in the team’s push for the playoffs, and they needed him to be. So maybe there’s a little bit of “he left it all out on the ice” through Game 82, or the increased workload with the injuries has put too much on his shoulders.
As is the case with Lindgren, Carlson hasn’t been necessarily bad in this series. In fact, he’s done a decent job, all things considered, on helping to keep the Rangers’ high-flying top line somewhat in check. But considering the injuries (and the state of this team even before those injuries), the Caps really can’t match up with this Ranger team without their best defenseman being exactly that: the best.
And then there’s Alex Ovechkin. It’s been much discussed since Game 2, but the Caps’ captain has gone from other-worldly to “where in the world did he go?” and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. Said Coach Carbery yesterday, “I thought the first two games, he looks a little bit off. He’s struggling.”
Look, Ovechkin has battled against the false narrative that he doesn’t show up in the postseason since his first outing back in 2008, simply because his team as a whole took a decade to get out of the second round. Over that span, all he did was score more goals than anyone else, put up more points than anyone else, and perhaps feel each game and series loss more than anyone.
One could argue that, after years of being for the team in the postseason, he’s earned the right in his “old” age to not always be The Guy. To have others fill in when he can’t.
The problem is, there is no other Guy for this team right now (although he’s certainly not the only one who needs to step up). As was the case for the Caps in their push for the playoffs, they need their captain to start doing what he does best, and that’s scoring goals – in whatever way he can.
Here’s a look at his journey since the start of the season:
That little dip at the end? That’s the playoffs.
So far in this series he’s been very much a perimeter player, shooting from his office or the blueline and rarely hitting the net. In fact, the man who has frequently led the league in shots on goal has registered exactly one shot. One. Through two games. He hasn’t registered a single point yet (not that he’s alone there, of course) and his ixG at all strengths is just 0.18, which ranks seventh among Caps’ forwards.
It’s crazy to say this about the man who has given his all for this team over the years, but it almost feels like he’s simply not working hard enough – whether that’s because he doesn’t have it in him or he’s injured or the Rangers are doing a better job than they ever have of containing him, it’s hard to tell. But putting just one shot on net, making lazy turnovers, and simply not looking engaged in a playoff game is very un-Ovechkin-like, and it’s making it very hard for this team to gain a foothold in a series that was always going to be tough to win.
On their own, none of these players are the sole problem with this team right now, and there are other guys (veterans, particularly) who are not performing up to their abilities. But the Caps simply don’t have the level of talent needed to go toe to toe with the Rangers’ skill players, so they need the guys they do have to be at their best – the guys who put this team on their backs and dragged them to the postseason.
Right now, that’s just not happening.