Sept. 21 vs. Boston Bruins at TD Garden<\/p>\n
Time: 5:00 p.m.<\/p>\n
TV: MNMT<\/p>\n
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps Radio 24\/7<\/p>\n
Washington Capitals (51-22-9)<\/p>\n
Boston Bruins (33-39-10)<\/p>\n
The Caps open their six-pack of preseason tune-up tilts on Sunday afternoon in Boston when they face the Bruins in the first of six exhibitions scattered across a leisurely span of 14 days and nights. While the Caps must face the Bruins after just three days\u2019 worth of camp practices, Washington will have just one preseason tilt across the next six nights following Sunday, and that\u2019s a \u201chome\u201d game against Philadelphia at Hershey\u2019s Giant Center on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Washington\u2019s preseason opener features an unsurprisingly youthful roster, peppered with players who have been part of one or both of Hershey\u2019s consecutive Calder Cup crowns in 2023 and 2024. There could be as many as half a dozen members of those recent Calder Cup champs taking the ice for Washington for Sunday\u2019s exhibition opener. The Caps\u2019 Sunday lineup also features a few players who are about to embark upon the first full season of their pro hockey careers in 2025-26; there will likely be three of them suiting up on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The first preseason game or two can be messy and ugly to watch; both sides typically dress inexperienced lineups, younger players may have some jitters, and veterans can be shaking off rust and seeking to re-establish their timing. All of that must be factored into any evaluations after the fact.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough because you\u2019re always balancing the scrambly play, which you\u2019re going to expect; it\u2019s going to be there,\u201d says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. \u201cBut you would like to see some remnants of the things that we\u2019ve done this week and talked about. And then the other two pieces that I look for is a competitiveness, and then show your skill set. Like, what do you do that separates you? What\u2019s going to be your MO or bread and butter at the NHL level? And try to put that on display at various points in the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo there\u2019s three things inside there that you would like to see, and then you evaluate that postgame, and was this player able to do any of those things, or all of them?\u201d<\/p>\n
Hendrix Lapierre, the Caps\u2019 first-round choice (22nd overall) in the 2020 NHL Draft, is participating in his fourth full training camp with the Caps, and is penciled in Sunday\u2019s lineup in Boston. Lapierre finished the 2023-24 season with Washington, where he put together a strong finish with the Caps that helped them nail down an improbable playoff berth on the final night of the regular season. Over the final third of that season, Lapierre amassed six goals and nine assists for 15 points in 26 games. During that stretch, only Dylan Strome (25 points), Alex Ovechkin (23) and John Carlson (20) had more points than Lapierre.<\/p>\n
As a member of both Hershey Calder Cup championship squads, Lapierre had consecutive short summers, and he wasn\u2019t as sharp as he or the team would have liked last year at this time. Lapierre was returned to AHL Hershey midway through last season, the final season of his entry level contract.<\/p>\n
The personable 23-year-old is now in a heated battle with several teammates for one or two openings among the forward ranks, and if he doesn\u2019t crack the opening night roster, Lapierre would require waivers to return to Hershey. He spent a lot of time reflecting this summer and re-watching his games from last season, as well as a lot of time in the gym.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, I don\u2019t have a ton of experience in pro hockey, but I\u2019ve seen, I\u2019ve learned, I\u2019ve made mistakes, I\u2019ve done some good things,\u201d says Lapierre.\u201d So throughout all that, you kind of figure out what it takes, and when you get to camp and it\u2019s your fourth or fifth camp, it\u2019s not the same feeling as your first or second camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously last year, I don\u2019t have any excuses for my camp; it just wasn\u2019t good enough. But I know that, okay, last year, I didn\u2019t do this or this right, but I can just focus on working extremely hard and showing everyone how bad I want it.\u201d<\/p>\n
To Carbery\u2019s point, Lapierre wants to make a point of showcasing his competitiveness and grit in one-on-one battles.<\/p>\n
\u201cI watched my games from last year, and I think that\u2019s probably the most important thing, just the hockey side of it,\u201d says Lapierre. \u201cI know what I can accomplish, I know what I can do, I just have to put it on display. <\/p>\n
\u201cI worked on being a little more gritty in those one-on-one battles, being a shooting threat. A lot of stuff that goes into it, but in general it\u2019s just about being a little tougher, and I want to prove that in camp. I want to prove that I can be someone who is tough to play against. Obviously, I have creativity and speed and stuff, but if I can bring a little more of that to my game, I think it\u2019s very beneficial. I worked a lot on just every day making sure I wasn\u2019t cheating it, even though it was a summer practice or whatever, and having the right habits.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Sunday in Boston, Lapierre and 19 other Caps will put their best foot forward against the Bruins, seeking to shine in the eyes of those that matter most. And the evaluators know that as they do the evaluating, some nuance is needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to take it all in and take it with a grain of salt,\u201d says Carbery of evaluating players\u2019 performance in preseason games. \u201cA lot of us coaches \u2026 you play at home, you play a veteran-heavy team, and then the opposing team brings a lot younger team, and then vice versa, and then vice versa.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you just have to take everything with a grain of salt. Like I said, you\u2019re trying to evaluate those games individually, collectively. Was the player able to demonstrate some of their skill set, what they\u2019re going to be able to do, or what you want them to do at the NHL level? Were they able to take some of the information that we\u2019ve gone over this week? It is trick and you\u2019ve got to make sure that you\u2019re not over-analyzing a game where you just don\u2019t know what the opposition was bringing or doing, or what their lineup looked like, and so forth.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the outset of last season, Boston was seen as one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference and the Caps were mostly viewed as a middle-of-the-pack team that might struggle to make the playoffs after barely making the postseason in 2023-24. But the opposite occurred; the Caps rode a strong start to a first-place finish in the East while Boston struggled mightily out of the gates and made two coaching changes, one last November and another over the offseason when Marco Sturm \u2013 briefly a Capital at the end of his excellent playing career \u2013 was hired as the B\u2019s newest bench boss.<\/p>\n
The 2024-25 Bruins missed the postseason and finished in the basement of the Atlantic Division, their first last-place finish since 2006-07. The proud Original Six franchise has avoided a full rebuild for years, but it may be on the cusp of one now. The B\u2019s cleaned house at the trade deadline, picking up some potentially prime assets in the process.<\/p>\n
Aside from its third-round choice in 2027, Boston owns each of its choices in the first four rounds of the next three NHL Drafts. The Bruins also have additional first-round picks in 2026 and 2027, and an additional fourth in 2026.<\/p>\n
All three of those acquired selections came from within the Atlantic Division. The B\u2019s got Fraser Minten and a 2026 first from the Leafs for Brandon Carlo, and they acquired Florida\u2019s first-round selection in 2027. The additional fourth-rounder came from Tampa Bay in a draft floor deal this past June; the Lightning received Boston\u2019s fourth-rounder in 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sept. 21 vs. Boston Bruins at TD Garden Time: 5:00 p.m. TV: MNMT Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-157574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}