JUNKIES: Coach Carbs laments the Caps' issues in the shootout

It very rarely snows in Victoria, British Columbia, where Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery is from, so even though he spent a lot of his career in where it does snow a lot, he can sympathize with those of us in the DMV who aren’t used to the blizzard-like conditions and after effects we’ve felt this week.

“Victoria and that area is very Seattle-ish weather; it’s really close to Seattle, so it misses a lot of the snow and gets more of the freezing rain, and that's kind of the winter weather there,” Carbs told the Junks Wednesday. “So usually when snow would come, when I was growing up, it'd be there for a couple of days and the rain would wash away, so you are accurate.
But, I have lived in various places in Michigan and the northeast, and Toronto, so I’ve hardened up a little bit!”

Here’s one thing Carbs doesn’t want any sympathy, with, though: the Caps have lost two of their last three games in a shootout, so he felt it when EB said the team is ‘sorry’ at the shootout.

“Yeah, it's been a struggle, I agree, and I will say like the shootout's a little bit of a coin flip, but because we were so spoiled for so many years that Oshie and Kuznetsov were so automatic, it’s not as easy, because those two guys are two of the best of all time in the shootout,” Carbs said. “What actually goes on in the shootout is really hard for most players to score, and so that's what we're going through a little bit. We don’t have a set three shooters that we can go to; Ovi is 0-fer his last 11, and I think Stromer is 2-for-12 in his career. So, we’re trying to find it, and find an order, and some guys that have a little bit of a niche there that that can score in those moments, because it's not always who you think. It’s a unique situation with the pressure and everything that goes with it.”

And maybe a little overhyped right now, because the Caps went all though the 2024 portion of the schedule without one, and have now had two in three games, both on the business end.

“It’s funny it had been so long since we’d been through one, because when you don't go through one for a while, you go, okay, this is probably coming at some point, so we actually talked about it and went through our order and ran the numbers again,” Carbs said. “All of a sudden, we’ve been in two and lost both, so we'll keep tweaking with the order and who we use until we can find it. Dubois has been really good in his career, I wanna say almost 50 percent, so that’s maybe the one guy on our team that's like penciled in.”

To Carbs’ point, though, it’s hard to practice shootouts for this team; they do it once in a while, but the goalies are the problem?

“It’s hard for us to practice shootouts this season because of our two goaltenders – they catch the opposite way that 95 percent of goalies do,” Carbs said. “Parker Milner, our third goalie, when we do shootouts we like to use him, because it you ask our shooters, going against Logan and Chucky, it’s totally different moves because they catch the opposite way. So, your deep to the backhand would be the opposite way. So it's really hard to practice what you would use in a game against Logan and Chucky, because they catch the opposite way.”

With three games in four days now, hopefully they’re ready if another one comes about – and we hope you’re ready to listen to Coach Carbs’ entire visit, which also looks at the success of the Caps’ goalie platoon, his beefy second line, and more!