Caps Stop Home to host sharks

Dec. 3 against the San Jose Sharks at Capital One Arena

Time: 19:00

TV: MNMT

Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Kasketter Radio 24/7

San Jose Sharks (9-13-5)

Washington Capitals (17-6-1)

After a week of high-event, rollercoaster hockey in which they were the only team in the NHL to win four games, the Caps put that four-game winning streak on the line in a Tuesday night tilt against the San Jose Sharks.

The Caps won four games in six nights – three of them on the road – and they scored four or more goals in all four wins. What’s really wild is that they’ve conceded four or more goals in each of their last three games, while winning all three. It’s the first in the franchise’s half-century history.

Washington won all four games in comeback fashion, and it won all four with significant contributions from its power play, which has been red-hot the past three weeks (13-for-29, 44.8 percent). For the first and second times this season, the Caps got game-winning goals on the power play in Florida (from Jakob Chychrun last Monday) and in Tampa Bay (from Tom Wilson on Wednesday). In Friday’s 5-4 win over the Islanders, Washington scored twice with the extra man, and it accounted for three power-play goals in the second period of Saturday’s 6-5 win over the Devils in New Jersey.

On Nov. 9, the Caps woke up to find themselves at the very bottom of the NHL’s power play playbook with an anemic 8.7 percent success rate. That night against the Blues in St. Louis scored Alex Ovechkin and Connor McMichael both on the power play in an 8-1 win over the Blues, sparking a remarkable ascent that has continued with Ovechkin out of the lineup for each of the last six games.

Washington has scored with the extra man in five straight games, eight of the last nine, and, starting with the Nov. 9 game at St. Louis, nine of the last 11 games.

“I’ve liked a lot of things structurally,” said Caps coach Spencer Carbery of his team’s extras unit. “But I think maybe the most impressive thing that group has done is that Alex has been out and so a couple of things come into play. One is we’ve had to throw something together pretty quickly , because we’ve had a staple there for years, in a certain place and obviously a part of it. So these five guys have had to come together … and it’s been really impressive to see them get on the same page so quickly, as they have done when Alex was out.

“And then also taking a little bit of (responsibility): ‘We’ve got to step up; we’ve got to provide some offense in some of these games, without (Ovechkin) and without his shooting.’ And I feel like they’ve done a really good job as a group of five where they’ve really stepped up and taken the bull by the horns and produced offensively on our power play, those numbers are incredible as the greatest power play player ever has been out of line. You have to take a step back and really appreciate what those five guys are doing.”

Trimming it down to just the last six games Ovechkin has missed, the Caps are 8-for-20 (40%) on the power play, have scored with the extra man in five of the six games, and have had more power-play goals in each of the last two contests. The aforementioned game in St. St. Louis is the only other contest this season in which Washington has hit more than one extra man.

Eleven different Capitals skaters have recorded power-play points this season, and nine have done so in the six games Ovechkin has missed. On Saturday night against the Devils in Newark, the Caps scored three power-play goals on three opportunities in a span of 10 minutes, turning a 2-1 deficit into a 4-2 lead.

Not only did they function without Ovechkin, they didn’t have Dylan Strome for the first two of those Saturday night power plays in New Jersey and were going up against a fourth-ranked Devils penalty kill. With 11 points (one goal, 10 assists), Strome is the Caps’ leading power play scorer; Ovechkin (four goals, three assists) and John Carlson (one goal, six assists) are tied for second with seven points each.

It was Strome who drew the double minor penalty that put the Caps on a four-minute power play midway through the middle period, but he was unavailable because he was stitched up; it was the second time in three games that Strome put his team on a game-changing double-minus power play because he took a stick to the grill.

Don’t worry, kid. PL Dubois moved from the second unit to the first and he set up McMichael for the equalizer on the front end of the double mole. Then Lars Eller jumped over the boards and gave Chychrun the go-ahead. Late in the period on a separate power play, Rasmus Sandin scored with help from rookie Ivan Miroshnichenko.

Eller, Sandin and Miroshnichenko all picked up their first power play points of the season in the second period of Saturday’s game. And Sandin’s goal was the third extra-man goal scored by a defenseman in Washington’s last four games. Through the Caps’ first 20 games of the season, Carlson’s opening night power-play goal — the first goal scored by the team this season — on Oct. 12 had been the only one by a defenseman.

“It’s nice to see those guys step up in those moments when they get the opportunity,” Carbery says. “If – down the road – we need to get a different look, it gives you confidence to put Sandin, Dubie and Miro in those spots to be successful.”

The Caps’ three-week power play binge has pushed them all the way up from 32nd in the NHL on Nov. 9 to 14th in the league (at 22.7%) on Dec. 2, and the Caps are now sixth in the league in special team index (106); New Jersey leads with 114.7.

San Jose’s record is deceiving. The Sharks dropped nine straight games (0-7-2) out of the starting gates this season and have played to a respectable 9-6-3 mark since. San Jose has won just three of 14 away games (3-7-4), but it has earned a point in six of its last eight (3-2-3) away games.

For the Sharks, Tuesday’s game is the second stop on a six-game road trip that started with a 4-2 victory in Seattle on Saturday night. San Jose has won three of its last four, scoring 22 goals in the process; they hammered the Kings 7-2 and crushed the Kraken 8-5 on their recently concluded home court.

After Tuesday’s game in Washington, the Sharks continue on to Tampa Bay, Florida, Carolina and St. Louis. San Jose’s next home game is a week from Saturday, December 14 against Utah.

Notes: Both Alex Ovechkin (broken fibula) and Sonny Milano (upper body) were on the ice for the first time since their respective injuries. Two weeks to the day after suffering his injury in Utah, Ovechkin skated on his own. Milano, injured Nov. 6 against Nashville, wore a light blue non-contact sweater … Carlson, Strome, Nic Dowd and Brandon Duhaime each had “maintenance days” Monday and did not skate.