The Washington Capitals scored just one goal in their season-opening loss to the Boston Bruins on Wednesday night. While the team certainly created more chances than the Bruins \u2014 finishing the game with 16 high-danger chances to Boston\u2019s 5 \u2014 their actual offensive output was hampered by what appeared to be a lack of chemistry to begin the year.<\/p>\n
After more than a few bobbled pucks and some overpassing, head coach Spencer Carbery went back to the drawing board midgame, sending out nine different combinations of forwards. While the changes didn\u2019t spark any further offense on Wednesday, Carbery kept some of his tweaks at Capitals practice on Friday.<\/p>\n
Capitals 10\/10 practice lineup<\/p>\n
Ovechkin<\/p>\n
Strome<\/p>\n
McMichael<\/p>\n
Beauvillier<\/p>\n
Lapierre<\/p>\n
Leonard<\/p>\n
The changes that have stuck come in the team\u2019s top-six forward group, with Connor McMichael switching wings and moving up to the top trio with Alex Ovechkin and Dylan Strome. Ovechkin started on the right wing with Strome and Aliaksei Protas against Boston before Carbery moved McMichael up for 3:04 of ice time with the top line in the latter portion of the defeat.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can tell guys are off early in the game,\u201d Carbery said postgame. \u201cI moved Pro with Dubois and Willy, just flipped Mikey and him. You\u2019re just looking for some combinations. We were just looking for a spark and some offense, especially when we\u2019re held off the scoresheet for the first two periods.\u201d<\/p>\n
McMichael did play sparingly with Ovechkin and Strome at five-on-five last season, sharing the ice for 105 minutes. The connection wasn\u2019t great; the Capitals owned just 39.8 percent of shot attempts, 35.2 percent of expected goals, 38 percent of scoring chances, and 34.1 percent of high-danger chances with them on the ice.<\/p>\n
The Capitals\u2019 lone goal against the Bruins occurred after Carbery made the changes, with Protas registering the primary assist on Tom Wilson\u2019s first goal of the season. Protas, Wilson, and Pierre-Luc Dubois played 192:22 of five-on-five ice time together last year and were very effective play drivers. During their minutes, the Capitals saw 56.2 percent of shot attempts, 57.7 percent of expected goals, 56.7 percent of scoring chances, and 53.9 percent of high-danger chances.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll tell you this, those lines are going to move around,\u201d Carbery said Friday. \u201cYou guys know me by now. I\u2019m looking for hot hands. All our guys know each other well enough that there\u2019s not a lot of \u2014 in our top six, especially \u2014 there\u2019s not a lot of surprises when guys move around. Like, Tom Wilson knows Connor McMichael, Protas, Dubois, Alex Ovechkin, and Dylan Strome by now.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when I move those things around, it\u2019s usually just trying to find a spark or I recognize that there are two or three guys that are really going and have good jump, and their puck touches are really good, and I try to get them together. So, moving Pro and Mikey, those guys are somewhat interchangeable. They\u2019ve played on both those lines, and so we\u2019ll start that way and see where it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Outside of the changes to the team\u2019s top two lines, the only other news from Friday\u2019s skate is that Dylan McIlrath is no longer wearing a no-contact jersey. The 33-year-old defender was a full participant in practice but remains on injured reserve after suffering a lower-body injury in the Capitals\u2019 preseason finale last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n Declan Chisholm and Vincent Iorio again skated as the team\u2019s fourth defense pairing, while McIlrath and Sonny Milano were the extra skaters on the ice.<\/p>\n The Capitals are now set to hit the road for the first time this season, playing a weekend back-to-back against the New York Islanders and New York Rangers. The Islanders are up first on Saturday night, hosting the Caps at UBS Arena.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Washington Capitals scored just one goal in their season-opening loss to the Boston Bruins on Wednesday night.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-214819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}