Through two games, the Caps have put 63 shots on Sam Montembeault, and their 31.6 shots-for per 60 at five-on-five (second highest rate in the playoffs so far) is way up from their regular-season mark of 26.7. But it’s not just quantity – it’s quality, too. Per NaturalStatTrick, the Caps’ high-danger chances per 60 are up 27 percent (from 11.5 to 14.7), making up the biggest chunk of that uptick (medium-danger chance rate is nearly identical, and low-danger rate is up around 13 percent). The result is that Montembeault has seen the second-most high-danger shots of any goaltender in the playoffs… and the rest of the top-six have all played a full game-plus more than he has:
Montembeault has been very good so far, handling those high-danger chances at an .870 clip overall, and turning away all 15 medium- and 22 low-danger shots he’s faced at fives.
But the Caps had an all-situation shooting percentage of 12.6 and 10.7 at five-on-five during the regular season, so one could reasonably expect (though never guarantee) their current respective 9.4 and 7.1 marks to regress a bit going forward as Montembeault also regresses towards more sustainable numbers (though… well… you know), and for actual goals to start catching up with expected tallies, especially in the middle six:
Lars Eller’s line has been on the ice at five-on-five for 10 Caps shots on goal, 11 scoring chances-for and four high-danger scoring chances-for… no goals. Pierre-Luc Dubois’ trio has been on for 12 Caps shots on goal, 9 scoring chances-for and four high-danger scoring chances-for… no goals. Nic Dowd’s line is at 8/10/4… zero.
That’s not to say it’s time to shake up these lines. To the contrary, they’re all working and generating offense – it’s only a matter of time before it starts showing up on the score sheet. Individually, it looks like this at fives:
Point being, the Caps are doing just about everything right offensively. Keep at it and they’ll break through.
2. Match Game
As the series shifts to Montreal, we can expect some fairly sizable changes. For one, the Canadian national anthem tout en Français.
More than that, though, is that Martin St. Louis will now have the last line change and, presumably, will try to get his top trio away from Spencer Carbery’s preferred one-two punch of Pierre-Luc Dubois’ and Nic Dowd’s lines. But how much St. Louis chases the ideal matchup (the Dylan Strome line… and not because of Strome) for Suzuki will be interesting to watch.
For one thing, while getting Suzuki away from Dubois obviously gets the former a better matchup, it also frees up the Dubois line to focus on creating offense against more favorable competition a bit more than the defensive role they shouldered at home. And the result could be fireworks, given that the two lines – Suzuki’s and Dubois’s – finished first and second in goals-for rate over the course of the regular season:
But more than that, depending how hard St. Louis goes after that Suzuki-Strome match-up, he might be letting Spencer Carbery dictate when, where and how much he plays his best players, which brings us to a brief digression. Here’s Bruce Boudreau (from his book Gabby: Confessions of a Hockey Lifer) on line-matching:
Back here in 2025, Strome is averaging 14:20 per game at even-strength through two games, while Suzuki is at 19:03. Now, Martin St. Louis is obviously too smart to keep his powder dry waiting for those Strome shifts (and this is a little different in that it’s matching to exploit a defensive weakness rather than mitigate an offensive strength). But better coaches than St. Louis have chased matchups to their own detriment. He would be wise to keep throwing that Suzuki line out there as often as possible and only worry about matchups for them in obvious situations like offensive zone draws. As for the other lines… we’ll see. Back to Boudreau to close us out here, reminiscing about his first playoff game behind the Caps bench:
In this series, we’re probably about to find out if every Caps’ line is able to play against every Canadiens’ line. We’re already pretty sure that they can play against three-quarters of them, at least. That may be enough at home or on the road.
3. Lenny Leonard
Prior to Game 2, we noted the rotten (unsustainably so) puck luck Ryan Leonard has had during his otherwise charmed first few weeks in the NHL:
Ryan Leonard's on-ice shooting percentage at 5v5 during the regular season was laughably low: 1.9% (1 goal on 54 shots on goal (100 shot attempts); 0-for-16 on his shots (29 shot attempts)). I know Eller and Mangia aren't the most skilled finishers or playmakers, but c'mon. Breakthrough coming.
— Japers' Rink (@japersrink.bsky.social) April 22, 2025 at 11:22 AM
Leonard finally got a little finishing from linemates in Game 2, but, interestingly enough, only after a partial line change that saw him end up in Ovechkin’s spot on the top line. Jack Han summarizes the play that ended up as Leonard’s first NHL assist:
WSH9 Ryan Leonard catches a stretch pass inside a crossover, which allows him to gain the blue line while keeping his eyes toward the middle. From there, he plays off MTL15 Alex Newhook’s heels and finds WSH72 Anthony Beauvillier. Beauvillier one-touches the puck to WSH17 Dylan Strome, who scores after driving between MTL defensemen.
via Hockey Tactics, which breaks down the play in much greater detail… check it out
One wonders if that ends up in the net with Andrew Mangiapane and Lars Eller playing the Anthony Beauvillier and Dylan Strome roles, respectively, but that’s neither here nor there. What matters is that Leonard – who leads the team in a handful of not-unimportant underlying metrics – is self-assured and continues to create chances as he gets his footing:
One such play was a beautiful in-tight give-and-go set up for a Mangiapane one-timer. And it really is only a matter of time before he gets some puck luck and the scoreboard starts spinning. Including the regular season, the Caps’ rookie now has 37 shot attempts and 19 shots on goal without a goal. In the playoffs, he’s been on the ice for 15 Caps scoring chances and seven high-danger chances, and only that one above has found it’s way past Montembeault. Though snake-bitten, Leonard remains unfazed – he knows that first “real” goal (congratulations from The Great One on that other one notwithstanding) is coming: