SKATE SHAVINGS – News and notes from Caps’ Morning Skate

Buffalo Run – The Caps make a quick trip to Buffalo for their only game in Western New York this season and the last of their five Monday night road games this season. The Caps are on an eight-game point streak on home ice (6-0-2) and are looking to head straight to the road in a building that hasn’t been kind to them over the past two seasons.

Since snapping a 10-game road win streak to start the season, the Caps have lost four of their last five road games (1-4-0). They have two more one-game trips left – to Nashville and Ottawa, respectively – before embarking on their longest trip of the season in the second half of this month.

Washington has lost each of its last three visits to Buffalo, going 17-8 overall in those three contests. In their only previous meeting this season, on December 14th in Washington, the Caps defeated the Sabers 4-2.

Buffalo was without blueliner Rasmus Dahlin in this game last month, but the dynamic defenseman is back in the lineup and has notched nine helpers in his last six games.

“(He’s a) game-changer back there,” Caps coach Spencer Carbery said. “It just gives them an additional weapon that can change the game in a lot of different aspects, whether it be power play, 5-on-5 or offensive blueline. He plays a lot of minutes for them, so we have to be ready for him.”

Draw the border – The Caps’ new line combinations secured a 7-4 victory over the New York Rangers on Saturday afternoon at Capital One Arena. Three of Washington’s four forward lines received new looks for Saturday’s game, and all four lines scored at 5-on-5 for the Caps in the win over the Blueshirts.

It was four years ago this month – at the start of the pandemic-shortened and time-limited 56-game 2020-21 season – when then-Caps coach Peter Laviolette first put Nic Dowd on a line with Carl Hagelin and Garnet Hathaway, and that Dowd Line – obviously with different wingers over the last two seasons – has continued to flaunt his brand with the same man in the middle.

Laviolette used the Dowd line to eliminate Buffalo’s team of Taylor Hall, Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhart early in the season, which saw the Caps and Sabers meet eight times, with half of those meetings coming in the first half dozen games of the season. Then-Sabres coach Ralph Krueger quickly agreed with the Dowd line, calling the unit “one of the best checking lines in the league.”

Four years and a few hundred games later, Dowd still centers one of the game’s best checking lines; although he had a rotating cast of wingers (last year’s wingers – Beck Malenstyn and Nicolas Aube-Kubel – are both now at Buffalo). Last week, before Andrew Mangiapane was moved to the right side of that unit, Dowd discussed the 2024-25 iteration of his line with Brandon Duhaime and Taylor Raddysh.

“I think we all want to achieve the same goal,” says the veteran pivot, “and I think our individual goals align with what we want to achieve as a line.” I’m not saying we all play the same, because I don’t think we would complement each other as much as we do in that case, but I feel like we’re all good at similar things.

“I think what makes us successful is that we are predictable (to each other) where the puck is going to go, and that allows us to have a half-second lead on the defenseman. We realize we’re going to get the puck in here and it’s going to end up here, so the guys have to be here. And another success factor is that we play close to each other. We are close together in the (defensive) zone. We don’t rely on a player making two or three plays to get out of the zone. I rely on these people to be right next to me so they can help me.

“And then in the (offensive) zone it’s exactly the same thing. We ask F1 and F2 to do their jobs – and F3 – but we are all very close. So if anyone needs help, we’ll be there immediately to help. We try to make it a challenge (for the opponent) to get out of the zone by suffocating (them), and we keep doing the same thing, over and over again. And then at some point you know something is going to happen, right? And sometimes you score, sometimes you don’t, sometimes you get rewarded and sometimes you don’t. But honestly, I think the way we play, if we keep doing the same thing, we will ultimately get a positive result.”

It’s a relentlessness of mindset and performance on the ice, and it seems to extend easily to anyone on either side of Dowd. In his first game on the line Saturday against the Rangers, Mangiapane scored Washington’s third of seven goals off a great cross drive from Dowd.

A day later, Carbery praised Mangiapane’s performance on Saturday as “one of his best games of the year as a Washington Capital.”

“They are good, hard-working players and you can easily see it in them,” Mangiapane says of his newest teammates. They are predictable and I would say they make the right play every time, or at least they try. It’s fun to play with these guys. They work hard and I think we had good chemistry today.”

In the networks – Charlie Lindgren gets the goalie job for the Capitals in Buffalo tonight. From Nov. 15 to Dec. 20, Lindgren won seven of nine starts, but he’s trying to stop a short personal three-game deficit (0-2-1) tonight. He most recently made 30 saves in a shootout loss to Minnesota on Jan. 2 at Capital One Arena.

In five career appearances – four starts – against the Sabres, Lindgren is 2-2-0 with a 3.68 GAA and .874 save percentage.

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen is the expected starter for the Sabers tonight. Buffalo’s second-round pick (54th overall) from the 2017 NHL Draft is now in his fifth NHL season and set a career-high 27 wins last season. He is 3-1-1 in his last five starts, conceding two or fewer goals in three of the five games.

Lifetime against the Caps, Luukkonen is 4-1-2 in seven appearances, all starts, with a 2.93 GAA and .906 save percentage.

Everything lined up – Here’s what we think the Caps and Sabers could look like on Monday night in Buffalo:

WASHINGTON

Forward

8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 16-Raddysh

21-Protas, 80-Dubois, 43-Wilson

20-Eller, 24-McMichael, 13-Vrana

22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 88-Mangiapane

defender

38-Sandin, 74-Carlson

6-Chychrun, 3-Roy

42-Fehervary, 57-van Riemsdyk

goalkeeper

48-Thompson

79-Lindgren

Extras

27-Alexeyev

52-McIlrath

63-Miroshnichenko

Lost/injured

15-Milano (upper body)

19-Backstrom (Hip)

77-Oshie (back)

BUFFALO

Forward

17-Sugar, 24-Cozens, 72-Thompson

77-Peterka, 71-McLeod, 89-Towel

9-Benson, 20-Kulich, 19-Cancer

22-Quinn, 81-Lafferty, 96-Aube-Kubel

defender

26-Dahlin, 4-Byram

25 Power, 75 Clifton

23-Samuelsson, 10-Jokiharju

goalkeeper

1-Luukkonen

47-Reimer

Extras

8-Gilbert

78-Bryson

Lost/injured

12-Greenway (undisclosed)

29-Malenstyn (disease)