Caps and Canadiens tangle again on Friday night at Bell Centre
April 25 vs. Montreal Canadiens at Bell Centre
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT, TNT, truTV, Max
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps Radio 24/7
Washington Capitals (51-22-9)
Montreal Canadiens (40-31-11)
Washington leads series, 2-0
After squeezing out a couple of tight wins on home ice to start their best-of-seven, first-round playoff series with the Montreal Canadiens, the Caps now head north to Quebec for the weekend, and for the next two games of the set. Game 3 is Friday night at Bell Centre, and Game 4 is two nights later here in Montreal.
After taking a 3-1 decision over the Habs in Wednesday’s Game 2 in Washington, the Caps hold a 2-0 lead in the series. Logan Thompson made 25 saves – including all 14 shots he faced in a frenzied third period – to nurse a precarious 2-1 lead from the middle of the second period to essentially the final horn; Connor McMichael’s second goal of the game – an empty-netter – came at 19:58 of the third period.
A 2-0 lead in a best-of-seven is obviously the best possible result, and history tells us that such teams go on to win the series approximately 86 percent of the time. But underneath the 2-0 Washington lead, this series is much tighter than that lead suggests.
Seven of the eight first-round series are two games deep, and the Washington-Montreal series has seen just nine goals scored in those two games, tied (with Carolina-New Jersey) for the fewest in any series to this point. The Caps and Canadiens have been parrying and jousting for 122 minutes and 26 seconds now, and for 104 minutes and 1 second of that time, the Caps and the Canadiens have been within one goal of each other on the scoreboard.
And of the 106 minutes and 23 seconds of 5-on-5 hockey played in the series to date, the Habs have had the better of the shot attempts, with 53.42 percent to Washington’s 46.58 percent.
“I think our group feels that we can play with them,” says Montreal coach Martin St. Louis. “Like I’ve been explaining to you guys this morning, we’ve got to find more minutes of good hockey, like our brand. And it’s hard because Washington is a really good team.
“But can we get five, six, seven, eight more minutes? You’re not necessarily going to get them stacked together, because Washington is a good team. But can you extend that a little bit and find it?”
And of course, the Caps are also looking for more good minutes, and more good minutes inside of Montreal’s zone, preferably.
“When teams are down, they play a different style,” says Caps defenseman Jakob Chychrun. “They obviously play more aggressive, and we just can’t sit back. We just need to continue to play the way we were the first two periods. When we’re predictable out of our own end, breaking out pucks well, and getting in on the forecheck, we’re getting a lot of sustained [offensive] zone time, and a lot of puck possession and good chances.”
Washington has played well enough over the first 40 minutes of both games, and it played well through the first half of the third period of Game 1. But Montreal has had the Caps on their collective heels in the latter stages of the third period of both games.
In Game 1, the Canadiens erased a 2-0 Washington lead in the back half of the third, forcing overtime. Alex Ovechkin’s second goal of the game – his first ever playoff overtime game-winner – enabled the Caps to escape with a 3-2 game 1 victory in the extra session.
Thompson won Game 2 for the Caps, walling off 14 third-period shots to prevent the Habs from staging a second successful comeback in as many games.
“He’s dialed,” says Caps right wing Tom Wilson of Thompson’s performance early in these playoffs. “He looks comfortable back there. He’s playing really well for us. Both goalies have been good.
“Tommer is always going to battle for us; we know that. And he made some huge saves, timely saves, bit of a highlight reel there, for sure. But it’s early, we’ve got lots of hockey [ahead]. We’re going to be better for him, in front of him, but he’s been great so far for us back there.”
Although the Caps have been in their end of the ice for more than they’d like to this point of the series, they’ve yielded only two goals against at 5-on-5, and they’ve combined to block 43 Montreal shot attempts, third most among the dozen teams that are two games into their respective first-round series. A dozen different Caps combined to block 24 shots in Game 2, with a dozen of those blocks coming during a chaotic third period.
But the Caps know they’re capable of being more assertive offensively, and that playing on their heels – as they have in much of the third periods of both games to this point – isn’t sustainable.
“It’s part of playoff hockey,” says Wilson. “Obviously, the team that’s behind is going to press. I think we can still do a little bit of a better job learning from that. But at the end of the day, we were coming back to the house, we were taking care of business in front of our own net. They got a couple good looks, but bend don’t break in those moments. And we obviously want to be on our front foot a little bit more, but they’re going to take chances on everything. Obviously, they’re pushing the game, they’re pushing to tie it up. We’ve just got to stay a little more aggressive.”
The Caps can expect the Canadiens to stay aggressive too, especially now that they’re headed home for the next two games. Montreal’s most recent trip to the Stanley Cup playoffs was in 2021, and it resulted in the Habs advancing all the way to the Stanley Cup final before bowing to Tampa Bay in a five-game series. But attendance at the Bell Centre was capped at just 3,500 patrons in that time of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Friday night’s Game 3 crowd is going to be the first sellout playoff crowd at Bell Centre since 2017, and players from both sides are pumped to be playing such an important game in such a highly charged atmosphere.
“I feel like my expectations are pretty high, but I feel like they’ll be exceeded,” says Montreal defenseman Mike Matheson. “I think it’s going to be really special for us to come back and have them give us a huge boost going into Game 3. Obviously, in the playoffs your home games are so important, and we’ve been good all year in the Bell Centre. And so much of it is because of our fans, and how loud they are and how much energy they bring. So, I’m definitely excited for it.”
Washington’s crowd was also loud and electric in the first two games of the series at Capital One Arena, the Bell Centre (21,273) holds almost three thousand more fans.
“The Bell Centre is obviously one of the most historic rinks that we have, and historic fan bases,” says Chychrun. “I know that late in the season with the push that they had, they were excited and really ramping up the energy. And I know that in the playoffs, it’s going to be another level, even up from that. I’m excited to get in there and feel that energy and ride with it, and hopefully we can play spoiler for that fan base.”
