April 30 vs. Montreal Canadiens at Capital One Arena
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT, ESPN
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps Radio 24/7
Washington Capitals (51-22-9)
Montreal Canadiens (40-31-11)
Game 5 – Washington leads series, 3-1
After winning the first two games of the series on home ice and splitting a pair of games north of the border over the weekend, the Caps are in position to push the Montreal Canadiens out of the Stanley Cup playoffs when the series resumes Wednesday night in Washington.
Wednesday’s Game 5 is the first of three must-win games for the Canadiens and an opportunity for the Caps to clinch a playoff series on home ice for the first time in just over a decade. On April 27, 2015, the Caps eked out a 2-1 win over the New York Islanders in Game 7 of a first-round playoff series between the two Metro Division rivals.
Ten years later to the day, the Caps won Game 4 of their current series in Montreal, and there was one striking similarity between the two games – stinginess.
When the Caps ousted the Isles here a decade ago, they limited New York to 11 shots on net, with only three of them from Islander forwards. And none of those three came from New York captain John Tavares, who finished second in the League’s scoring chase during that regular season, and who logged 20:44 without a shot that night. At the time, the Isles established a dubious NHL record for fewest shots on goal in a Game 7 in Stanley Cup playoff history.
In Sunday’s win in Montreal, the Caps limited the Habs to only 18 shots on net, with nine of them coming in the third period. But a closer look shows just how thoroughly the Caps stymied Montreal’s forward group, and in particular its daunting and dangerous top trio. First though, let’s back up just a bit.
In Friday’s Game 3, Montreal forwards combined to account for 35 of the team’s 40 shots on goal, and for 58 of its 81 attempts at all strengths in a 6-3 Canadiens win at Bell Centre. The Habs’ top forward line of Cole Caufield, Nick Suzuki and Juraj Slafkovsky combined for 19 of those shots, and all three player found the back of the net for Montreal that night.
Two nights later in Sunday’s pivotal Game 4, only six of Montreal’s 18 shots on net came off the sticks of forwards at 5-on-5. The only one of those shots from Montreal’s top line was Suzuki’s opportunity from in tight with less than five minutes left in the first period, Montreal’s first shot at 5-on-5 in nearly 10 minutes at that point of the contest.
In the second period, the Habs had only four shots. Two of those came on the power play, and both went in; they came off the sticks of Slafkovsky and Caufield, respectively. At even strength in the middle period, the Habs had only two shots on net in the entire period, both from at least 40 feet away and both in the final six minutes of the period.
Eight of Montreal’s nine shots in the third period of Game 4 came at evens, but only three – from Alex Newhook, Joel Anderson and Joel Armia – came from forwards.
In a game in which they did not control the matchups, the Capitals trimmed the Canadiens from 64 to 36 shot attempts at 5-on-5, and from 31 to 12 shots on net, and from four to zero goals. And they slashed the Suzuki trio’s output from 19 to four shots in the process.
While Suzuki and his linemates have accounted for seven of Montreal’s total of 11 goals to this point of the series, four of the seven have come on the power play.
“They’re all clichés, but when you’re making smart plays with the puck – crisp passes, defending as five – it makes it hard for the other team,” says Caps center P-L Dubois. “Last game especially, I thought we defended as five, we attacked as five. If one guy gets beat, they still have to go through four. That make’s everybody’s life a lot easier; one mistake doesn’t lead to a goal or a big scoring chance. Maybe it just leads to somebody else just having a good stick and it’s done.
“When we’ve been doing that all season, we’ve had success. We just need to do it again [Wednesday].”
If they’re able to play a disciplined game and stay out of the penalty box, and if their 5-on-5 game remains as strong as it’s been for three of the four games in the series to date – and Game 4 in particular – the Caps will give themselves their best chance to close the series.
No one expects it to be easy, though. The Caps and Habs have been either tied or a goal apart heading into the third period of each of the first four games, and in fact, of the 242 minutes and 26 seconds of hockey played in this series, the Caps and Canadiens have been even or within a goal of each other for 214 minutes and 45 seconds. That represents 88.6 percent of the series, and no other first-round series has featured a higher percentage of total time with the score that close.
“I’d like to see our best game of the series [Wednesday] night,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “And I don’t even need to throw out all the clichés about [how hard it is to win] the fourth game. I think that the easiest thing to point to is the Montreal Canadiens and what they have been through as a team.
“If you just look at this team and the resiliency and the post-4 Nations tournament and all the stuff that they’ve been through, you know exactly what type of game you’re going to get from the Montreal Canadiens [Wednesday] night, when they’re on the brink of elimination.”
Both teams have had their moments in this series, and every game has been tight for at least the first 45 or 50 minutes. When Habs coach Martin St. Louis says the series could easily be even or Montreal could be up 3-1, he’s not wrong. But for St. Louis, getting a Game 5 win comes down to one word.
“Momentum,” he says. “That’s all you need to grab. You need to go grab the momentum, and obviously it would come with a win. But it starts all the actions during the game that helps you keep the momentum and steal it back when you lose it.”
While Montreal has won the special teams battle decisively to this point, the Caps have been able to prevail by playing a sturdy 5-on-5 game, with the exception of Game 3 when a spate of uncharacteristic Washington turnovers – and Montreal’s ability to pounce and finish on them quickly – resulted in the Canadiens scoring four of their six 5-on-5 goals in the series. Among the 16 playoff teams, only Ottawa (five) has scored less at 5-on-5, going into Tuesday’s slate of playoff games.
“It’s got to be the same mindset,” says Canadiens center Jake Evans. “I feel like we’ve been playing win or go home hockey for the last two months, honestly, and it’s worked out pretty well for us. At the end of the day, if you told us we’d be in this situation at certain points of the year, we’d be pretty happy about it, and excited for that challenge. We’ve got a lot of belief in this group and it’s going to be the same old for us: win or go home.”
As they did on Sunday night in Montreal, the Caps want to amp up their levels, meet the moment, and meet the Canadiens’ desperation and drive.
“[Wednesday] night, on home ice, I’m not worried about our guys overlooking, or feeling overconfident in the moment,” says Carbery. “That’s just not who we are as a team, and it never has been in the time that I’ve been here. But you do have to understand that it’s going to take our best to win a game and eliminate the Montreal Canadiens. It means you are going to get their best punch [Wednesday] night, and I think the killer instinct part of it is for me, our team and our individual players, is understanding that we need one more level to get to.
“As a team and as an individual player, we’re going to need a little bit more than you showed in Game 4, a little bit more than you showed in Game 3, even the first two games at home, where we [played well]. We need a little bit more to push this team out of the fight, and that’s what’s going to require [Wednesday] night. So I think the killer instinct is going to come with understanding the level that we’re going to have to play at [Wednesday] night to win a hockey game.”
It’s been an intense series for four games, and it will assuredly be intense for as long as it continues.
“The last one is the hardest one to win,” says Caps right wing Tom Wilson. “They’ve been playing desperate hockey here for a while here; they clawed their way into the playoffs, and they’ve played us really hard to this point in the series, so we’re not expecting anything different. We know we’re going to get their best game, and we’ve got to come out with ours.”
