Let’s cut to the chase – tonight’s game between the Capitals and Canadiens is the marquee match-up on the NHL slate this evening. It’s a chance to see one of the best teams in the East take on the best in the East (and the League) – a Montreal team that has gone 15-0-3 in the Conference so far – in one of hockey’s holiest temples. More than that, however, it offers a chance for the Caps to do something they haven’t done all that often this year (due to a mix of opportunity and performance): make a statement.
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The start of the 2015-16 season has been good to the Caps. They’ve racked up points and climbed to the top of the Metropolitan Division (though once they summited the mountain, the peak moved a bit higher on them). They’ve put up sparkling numbers on both sides of the ice. They’re playing well as a team, and when they’re not, they’re still finding ways to win. These are all good, positive things that should give all of us reason for optimism (albeit cautious optimism, because… well, it’s the Caps).
The one thing that has been missing thus far is that Statement Game, the game in which every single player is able to find another level and in which the team steps up to show the hockey world that they deserve the title of contender.
To this point, the Caps have faced a lot of teams that have been or currently are out of the playoff picture, and for the most part they’ve done what they’re supposed to do against those teams (per CSN’s Chuck Gormley, the Caps are 10-0-1 against teams in the bottom-third of the NHL’s standings; that’s half of their schedule so far). It’s in the games against the hot teams, the tougher opponents, the fierce rivals, where they’ve come up a bit short.
A visit from the Sharks in early October resulted in a lopsided, Ovechkin-and-Backstrom-less 5-0 loss for the home team. Two weeks later, it was the visiting Penguins taking two points from a Caps’ team that looked somewhat disjointed. A few days after that, the Caps dominated the Rangers in just about every department (including turnovers)… every department except for the most important one, of course, en route to an embarrassing 5-2 loss at MSG. Then it was a brain cramp of a turnover that cost them in a 3-2 loss, again on home ice, to the Western Conference-leading Dallas Stars.
(Reasonable minds can disagree over whether the wins over the Blackhawks and Lightning belong on this list – those teams did, after all, play in last season’s last game, even if they aren’t quite showing that they’re ready to head back there so far this season.)
The good news is that their best efforts in that group of games were also their two most recent. The way the Caps played against a very tough Stars team is really how they should play most nights – aside from the catastrophic turnover that leads to the game-winning goal, of course – and they more or less took the Bolts behind the shed for the portion of the game that was in any real doubt. And it’s still early enough in the season where the “how” matters as much as, if not more than, the “how much”.
The better news? Both the team and Braden Holtby have a pretty good track record in Montreal over the past few (regular) seasons; the Caps have posted a 9-0-2 record there since the start of the 2009-10 campaign (yes, that one), while Holtby is 5-0-1 with a GAA of 1.31, a save percentage of .949 and two shutouts. Those are the kind of numbers you want in one of the toughest buildings in the League.
Of course, the Habs will be without their best player, reigning Hart Trophy-winning goaltender Carey Price, for the foreseeable future, which takes a bit of the luster off this match-up. Still, even sans Price, the Habs have proven to be a very tough, very confident team that scores a ton of goals, has elite special teams and plays in front of an insanely loud and opinionated bunch of fans.
It should be a good challenge for the Caps, a challenge they should be more than capable of taking on – and if they want to be one of the League’s best, they’ll need to prove that they can beat the League’s best.
Time to make a statement.