The Capitals had a tough start to their western Canada road trip last week with losses to the Winnipeg Jets and Edmonton Oilers, but they bounced back with 2-1 wins over the Seattle Kraken and Vancouver Canucks, and as they get ready to play the Calgary Flames on Monday, they’re well into the playoff race.
Tyler Yaremchuk and Colby Cohen talked about if the Capitals have what it takes to come out ahead in this fight for the final playoff spots in the East on Daily Faceoff Live.
Colby Cohen: The Capitals certainly have the veteran presence and the veteran leadership. It’s also good business for Alexander Ovechkin to be in the playoffs. He gets his 19th goal against the Vancouver Canucks, and a big win.
This team is just defending a lot harder, they’re killing plays. I don’t have the numbers, but I guarantee you, if you look at the time spent in the defensive zone, it looks drastically different than it did in the first 30 games of the season this year. So credit to Spencer Carbery and his staff for settling this group in. They also seem to be getting saves, and that’s always a huge difference.
So, it’s all coming together for Washington right now, and you look at the way that this road trip went. It started bad against Winnipeg and Edmonton, but they finished strong. They’ll finish this road trip in Calgary tonight, which is always a difficult game at the end of a road trip coming off of a big 2-1 win. Here’s my worry though: Calgary is tonight, and then it’s Toronto, Carolina, Winnipeg, Detroit, Toronto, and Boston, so it’s a gauntlet of a schedule.
Now, when you look at who the Islanders and the Flyers are playing, they also have gauntlets of a schedule. So I would say over the next 10-12 days of the 30 days or so we have left in the month, I think that is going to say more about who’s going to make the playoffs than the last two weeks of the season will because it’s a gauntlet. So whoever can come out the most unscathed is going to find their way into the playoffs.
But give credit, everybody wrote Ovi for dead and he might score 25 goals by the end of this year, I’d say probably somewhere between 20 and 25. And like I said, it’s good business to see the Great Eight in the playoffs.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Yeah it is, and that’s why I’ve always been rooting for teams like the Pittsburgh Penguins a little bit, just because I think it’s good for the league when Sidney Crosby is in the playoffs and you have those storylines.
You can watch the full episode here…
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