The Capitals pulled out a 2-0 win over Anaheim Tuesday night, but they did so without Alex Ovechkin, who was out again with a lower-body injury that head coach Spencer Carbery told the Junkies should be cleared up soon.
“I don't think this is gonna be a long term thing; I think I would expect him back soon, whether it's next game or the Saturday game, first game of the road trip,” Carbs said. “I think it’s coming soon. This isn't something that's gonna take, you know, a month, or five more games.”
And yes, Carbs is over the ‘string of questionable calls’ in Sunday’s game against the Rangers.
“You trying to get me in trouble?” Coach laughed. “That was a tough day for the officials, and there a blatant too many men that they had, they jumped early off a rush, and it was an easy call, especially given the situation. They put us down 5-on-3, I wasn't in love with that call to go down, and Nic Dowd, I feel like there was some embellishment there from Fox, which is a smart play, but I just feel like our guys are smart enough to know what's going on in those situations. So it was definitely an off night, or felt like that way, at least to us.”
Just like in any sport, like how MLB players know ump’s strike zone and NFL linemen know who calls the most holding penalties, eventually, you get to know NHL officials’ tendencies, too.
“I just know them because you've been around them. Like, Jake Brink, he used to ref games in the ECHL eight or nine years ago, so you start to get used to and have a relationship with the referees in the league and kind of get a feel for their demeanor and how they call games,” Carbs said. “But there's no real like, ‘hey, watch out for your high sticks tonight because Jake calls that,’ we don't really do much in, in the way of that.”
Back to Tuesday, Darcy Kuemper had 24 saves in a shutout win, and the timing of everything couldn’t have been better for the Caps.
“We new Anaheim had played the night before, and we know that they have a younger team, but they also have some veterans that are sprinkled in there, and we know that we needed to look after our business last night and make sure that we were finding a way to grind out two points, however that looked,” Carbery said. “Whether it was us firing on all cylinders or we had to grind, which we're very comfortable with and was how the game played out for us, which is fine, we knew we needed to have a strong performance and get a result.”
Even more impressive was Kuemper’s clean sheet given the lack of scoring chances the Caps allowed.
“It’s challenging for goalies when they look up because they're in the game, and when the puck is down at the other end for majority of the time, especially early in the game, and you look up and you haven’t faced a lot of action, sometimes it can get tricky mentally,” Carbs said. “All of a sudden, they're gonna get a scoring chance, and it's just inevitable that you're gonna give up whatever it is. So when the puck hasn't been in your end, it forces you to be Johnny on the spot in one look, even though you might have been just standing there for five or 10 minutes. Sometimes those are real challenging games for goaltenders, and I thought Kemp did a really good job of when we did lose a little bit of momentum, he made some real quality and timely saves that we needed. It was a great performance by him.”
Take a listen to Carbs’ entire segment, which includes thoughts on Ethan Bear’s play so far, the Caps’ unique upcoming schedule, and more!