Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN/Caps Radio Network
Washington Capitals (1-1-0)
New York Rangers (2-1-0)
A night after all 32 NHL teams were in action on Saturday – and two nights after zero NHL games were played on Friday – the Caps visit the Rangers in New York on Sunday at Madison Square Garden. Sunday’s game between the Caps and the Blueshirts is the lone game in the entire League on this first Sunday of the regular season.
Sunday’s game finishes up Washington’s first road trip of the season, a quick two-game journey to play a set of back-to-back games against a couple of Metropolitan Division foes. The trip started on Saturday night with a 4-2 victory over the Islanders at UBS Arena in Elmont, NY.
A season after becoming the fourth player in NHL history to score 30 or more goals in a season without scoring on the power play, Aliaksei Protas scored his first two goals of the new season to supply the difference in Saturday’s victory, the Caps’ first of the young season. Protas added an assist, and the three-point night matches his single-game career best.
All three of Protas’ points on Saturday came at 5-on-5. Since the start of last season, his total of 54 points (22 goals, 32 assists) at 5-on-5 ranks eighth in the NHL. Boston’s David Pastrnak leads with 67.
Martin Fehervary also scored for Washington, and Ryan Leonard scored what would prove to be the game-winner midway through the second period, just seconds after the expiration of a Washington power play. It’s the first game-winning goal of Leonard’s NHL career.
At the other end of the ice, Logan Thompson turned in a second straight strong start. Thompson made 34 saves – 19 of them in the third period – to pick up his first win of the season. He has fashioned a 2.03 GAA and a .930 save pct. in his first two starts of the season, though Charlie Lindgren is expected to make his first start of the season Sunday against the Rangers.
Prior to Saturday’s game, Caps coach Spencer Carbery hinted at – but did not commit to – potential lineup tweaks for Sunday’s game against the Rangers, the back half of the team’s first set of back-to-backs this season.
“We’ll think about that for [Sunday],” said Carbery on Saturday morning. “It definitely is in the back of our mind after [Saturday’s game] is looking at [Sunday] afternoon and making sure that we’re doing everything we can as a staff – planning, lineup-wise – to keep guys involved.”
Washington will be finishing up the first of 14 sets of games on back-to-back nights this season. With 15 wins on the back half of back-to-back games since Carbery took the reins at the outset of the 2023-24 season, the Caps rank fourth in the NHL over that span. Thirteen of those 15 victories have come on the road, where Washington’s 13 road victories on zero days rest is tied with Toronto for the most in the NHL.
Sunday’s game is obviously the second of back-to-backs for the Blueshirts as well. The Rangers thumped the Penguins 6-1 in Pittsburgh on Saturday night, in coach Mike Sullivan’s return to the Steel City after taking the Rangers’ head coaching job during the offseason.
Adam Fox had a pair of goals and three points for the Rangers, who also got a goal from ex-Cap Taylor Raddysh, his first in a New York sweater. Igor Shesterkin picked up his second win with an 18-save night in the New York nets.
The Rangers opened their season this past Tuesday night at home, coming up empty in a 3-0 loss to the Penguins in the New York coaching debut of Mike Sullivan, who went up against his former team after spending the last decade behind the Pittsburgh bench.
Two nights later in Buffalo, Sullivan and the Rangers were on the right side of a whitewash, shutting out the Sabres 4-0 for the coach’s first victory as New York’s bench boss. But the news wasn’t all pleasant for the Rangers that night; they lost center Vincent Trocheck to an upper body injury in the second period of the contest. Trocheck is out of the New York lineup on a week-to-week basis.
Since joining the Rangers as a free agent in the summer of 2022, he had played in 248 consecutive games with New York.
