MONTREAL — Charlie Lindgren began his first game at the Bell Centre since 2020 in a new seat: by himself, in the tunnel to the visitors dressing room.
Lindgren made 24 starts for the Canadiens from 2015-20. Two seasons later, he established himself as a full-time NHL goaltender with the Capitals. On Friday, he was soaking in the pregame playoff scenes like the rest of us.
“You’re essentially just sitting with the fans,” Lindgren said on Saturday. “(I was) probably just as energized as anyone.”
By the end of the game, Lindgren’s vantage point had shifted again. He was in the visitors net, taking over for injured Washington starter Logan Thompson and standing across the ice from another injury replacement, Montreal’s Jakub Dobeš playing in place of Sam Montembeault.
Now, after a 6-3 Montreal win cut Washington’s series lead to 2-1, whatever comes next will likely hinge on a pair of backup goaltenders, with neither the Canadiens nor Capitals providing updates Saturday on their injured No. 1 goalies.
The circumstances of their situations are fundamentally different, but their task is the same.
It’s a virtual certainty that Lindgren, for a second straight season, starts playoff games for the Capitals. Last spring, he dragged them into the postseason; in his final three starts, all wins, he stopped 75 of the 78 shots he faced. Washington squeaked through on tiebreakers and was swept in the first round by the Rangers.
In 2024-25, with Thompson in the mix, Lindgren’s save percentage dipped from .911 to .894; his teammates’ faith in him, though, is fully intact. They showed concern for Thompson, but not over the capability of his replacement.
“Charlie’s proven it to all of us in here over the last three years that he’s very capable of handling himself in the playoffs (and) in the regular season,” Capitals center Dylan Strome said. “Like (Alex Ovechkin) said last night, we’ve got two really good goalies.”
“We know Chuckie Lindgren,” Capitals coach Spencer Carbery said. “He’s done a great job, he’s a great goaltender. There’s no concern there.”
If Lindgren starts Game 4, it’ll be a full-circle moment for a player who went undrafted in 2013 and, as recently as 2021 with the St. Louis Blues, was playing on a two-way contract. It’ll also be a big deal for Charlie’s father, Bob, an accomplished goalie himself who grew up loving the Canadiens and idolizing Ken Dryden.
“Every day, I kept on working to get to moments like this, to potentially play moments like this,” Lindgren said. “And you think about 10-year-old Charlie and what he would do to be in a situation like this.”
Lindgren’s backstory included a lot of hurdles, being cut from teams, falling down and getting back up, time after time. Dobeš similarly overcame early hurdles in his career, finding himself without a team to play for in his native Czechia at age 16, picking up his life and moving to St. Louis so he could play midget triple-A hockey and finish high school in a foreign land.
Lindgren’s NHL career began almost a decade ago with five straight wins in a Canadiens uniform. Dobeš’ NHL career began earlier this season with five straight wins in a Canadiens uniform.
The two have taken the hard way here, but they also have earned the confidence of their teammates the hard way.
For Lindgren, it was leading an upstart Capitals team to an unexpected playoff berth last season. For Dobeš, it began in his very first NHL start, on the road, the first game out of the Christmas break this season against the Florida Panthers.
His Canadiens teammates were immediately sold.
“He gets thrown in against the defending Stanley Cup champs, gets a shutout,” Canadiens defenseman Kaiden Guhle said Saturday. “I think you look at his first three or four games, they were against some of the top teams in the league, and he played well. So I have all the confidence in the world in Dobeš; he has a lot of confidence in himself, which you need as a young goalie coming into the league.
“I think he believes that there’s no moment too big for him. I think he wants this moment, I think he’s ready for anything that’s thrown at him.”
After beating the Panthers on the road, Dobeš did the same at Colorado, at Washington, at Dallas and at home against the New York Rangers before losing in overtime to the New Jersey Devils. As Guhle mentioned, Dobeš’ first four wins all came on the road against legitimate Stanley Cup contenders.
More recently, Dobeš allowed one goal in each of his last two starts, a 2-1 win in Nashville on April 6 and a 1-0 overtime loss in Toronto on April 12.
“I think he knows what he did for us this year,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said. “He had a really good start, then he had a tougher stretch as a young goalie. But the last two games he played, when you think about it, we needed those points, he played in those games and he gave us good performances. We know he can do that, it’s just to play well in front of him so he’s not forced to steal a game.
“But we know he can do that too.”
Capitals’ top six needs to win their matchups on the road
Washington’s play on Friday took a nose dive from Games 1 and 2 in a few major ways, none more glaring than the overall effectiveness of the Alex Ovechkin-Dylan Strome-Anthony Beauvillier line. The latter two assisted on a third-period goal by Ovechkin that tied the game 3-3, but there wasn’t much positive beyond that.
With them on the ice, the Capitals were outshot 9-4, out-attempted 14-7 and out-chanced 7-3. Montreal also controlled more than 80 percent of the expected goals. Until then, Washington had won its minutes fairly decisively. What changed for Game 3? Pretty simple: St. Louis had the last change. He used it to match the Caps’ top line with his own and those three — Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovský — won the day.
“(St. Louis) is looking for a certain matchup, to try to get them out against Strome’s line,” Carbery said. “So they have to be able to handle those minutes, because inevitably with last change, he’s going to be able to find certain situations to get them out against Strome and (Ovechkin). So they have to be able to handle that when we don’t get to pick the matchup.”
Gaining the offensive zone, Strome said, was less of a problem than staying in it.
“We didn’t have enough zone time,” he said. “We were kind of getting the pucks in there and then kind of throwing them away and just not creating enough. Obviously the (shot total is) indicative of that.”
Carbery concurred, saying sloppy plays and bad decisions cost his team opportunities. He also made a point to say, essentially, that their issues weren’t confined to the Canadiens’ end. “Just even getting to that point that you’re talking about, of sustained pressure and getting in the offensive zone — our top six didn’t have a good night last night,” Carbery said. “For them to get back … is going to be key (Sunday night).”
Washington’s second line (Pierre-Luc Dubois between Connor McMichael and Tom Wilson) was similarly brutal; St. Louis typically matched them up with Christian Dvorak’s line and won the battle handily (10-3 in scoring chances, 17-6 in shot attempts).
The variable for Washington — and it’s a positive one — is that Carbery sounded increasingly optimistic about the status of Aliaksei Protas, who brought goal-scoring, high-end skating and substantive five-on-five play to Washington’s top six all season before a skate cut his foot on April 4.
“He’s full-go in practice, so we’ll just see (Sunday),” Carbery said. “Everything looking good. He’s out there taking contact and that, so we’ll just see tomorrow.”
Conditions ripening for Montreal’s X-factor to emerge
We had a conversation with Capitals rookie forward Ryan Leonard prior to Game 3 that would seemingly apply to Canadiens rookie forward Ivan Demidov and his adjustment to the NHL.
Keep in mind, Demidov is coming from a much higher level of hockey, playing with SKA Saint Petersburg in the KHL, but Leonard’s experience still has some relevance here.
“Honestly I didn’t really start to feel comfortable and completely feel myself until probably the last two games of the regular season, where I’m trusting myself more,” Leonard said Friday morning. “I think last game was the first time I really trusted myself with the puck and shooting it more.
“I’m definitely someone who’s a shot-first player and I was definitely a little bit tense at the start not to mess up and look to take that shot where I can trust myself.”
Leonard’s final two regular-season games came after he played seven games for the Capitals after leaving Boston College and signing his entry-level contract. Game 3 on Friday was Demidov’s fifth game since arriving in Montreal from Russia, the final two regular-season games and three playoff games.
In other words, Demidov might be nearing that zone where he begins trusting himself.
After his electric NHL debut against the Chicago Blackhawks, Demidov has not been nearly as visible, but that visibility has slowly been growing over the course of this series, beginning in the third period of Game 2 when he played on a line with Jake Evans and Alex Newhook.
“I still think for him it’s obviously a huge jump right now,” Evans said Friday morning. “I think every game he’s going to start learning more and more. He’s clearly a smart guy and understands the game, so I think every game he’s going to start understanding things more and things are going to open up for him. I don’t think it matters who’s really playing with him, it’s more just his game’s going to keep getting better and better.”
Demidov was back on that line in Game 3, and through four periods in the series, the trio has controlled 68.18 percent of the shot attempts and 66.72 percent of the expected goals in just under 12 minutes of five-on-five ice time. It’s created circumstances for Demidov to have the puck on his stick more, which is where his comfort should begin to grow.
But the most important development in that process was Patrik Laine being ruled out of Game 3 with an upper-body injury, allowing Demidov to be inserted on the right half wall of the Canadiens’ top power-play unit. It changes the dynamics of the unit because Demidov is a left shot, and Laine is a right shot. Cole Caufield was inserted into Laine’s usual spot at left circle — Caufield’s preferred position on the power play — and created a situation where left shots Demidov and Juraj Slafkovský can sometimes alternate playing on that right half wall and on the goal line, which is where Demidov often played in the KHL.
After the game, Slafkovský was asked how he liked the new setup on the power play, and he immediately became uncomfortable because he didn’t want to criticize the previous setup with Laine — one of the top power-play scorers in the league with 15 goals in only 52 games in the regular season. But he couldn’t hide how much he liked being able to swap spots with Demidov and get a few reps in that right circle.
“I like it,” he said. “I really like it.”
Ultimately, Demidov getting more puck touches on the power play with more space to operate could help fast-track his adjustment to playoff hockey, which could help him become the X-factor Carbery was somewhat concerned about prior to the series.
“It has so much value,” St. Louis said. “When you have touches on the power play, space, it builds your confidence and I think it translates to your five-on-five game. You saw last year we had Slaf on that half wall, and I think it was a big reason why he was able to gain some confidence and be able to relate that to his five-on-five play.
“I think Demidov is built for being a half wall guy, and him getting his touches on the PP, I think it’s important for a young player’s confidence and hopefully that translates to five-on-five.”
Demidov has yet to register a point in the playoffs. He has one shot on goal on just two shot attempts at five-on-five. He has not been a factor, let alone an X-factor.
But that might be on the verge of changing.
(Photo: Eric Bolte / Imagn Images)
