Ahead of the Leafs vs. Capitals matchup, Washington head coach Spencer Carbery discussed the matchup against/pre-scout of his former team and the challenges the Capitals are facing in their five-on-five game despite their strong results of late (6-2-2 L10).
You beat the Leafs just under three weeks ago. What did you like about how the game played out after shaking off an early disallowed goal and coming back from a couple of goals down?
Carbery: That was the tale of the game. We got a little bit frustrated. We scored on the first shift, and it got called back on an early whistle. It sort of got us off-kilter a little bit for the rest of the first, and then we got down in the game. But then there was the push from our group. We had a great third period.
It was one of those games that has become emblematic of our group over the last couple of years. You could feel that we were not going to be denied that night. We were going to find a way to get back into that game and tie that game up. We eventually won it in regulation. It was a character win for our group at home, for sure.
The Leafs appear to have heated up a little bit since that game. What are you seeing from them recently?
Carbery: It’s funny. You read little snippets about what is going on, and then you look at their record in the last 10, and it’s like, “What is going on here? They’re 6-2-2 in their last 10!”
Having played them recently, we have a good feel for their group, but we also know it is a good hockey team. As we felt in that game, we are going to have to be good tonight. As we work through our game and how we have been playing of late, it is a really important game for our group.
Do you feel like you have a bit of an edge in the prescout from your time with the Leafs‘ special teams systems? Or is it too different from your time in Toronto?
Carbery: Too different for two reasons.
Penalty kill-wise, Dean Chynoweth has moved on to Winnipeg. On the power play, Mitch (Marner) was such a big part of the power play there. The other weapons, like JT and those guys — I know them very well, from faceoffs to net-front. Knies has moved into that. But it just changes a bit of the rotational stuff that they do when Mitch isn’t there.
The individual tendencies — I know some of the little stuff. John Tavares is probably going to be around the net tonight, and he has great hands and wins a lot of draws. If you want to talk about one of the best I’ve ever seen at puck battles, it’s John Tavares. He is so slippery and good in a tight area at getting a puck, spinning, and all of a sudden, he is on the inside.
I feel like our guys have a good grasp on those individual tendencies, but pre-scout wise, the structure has changed a little bit.
With the way the Conference is skating out with all of the three-point games, it feels like a short stretch of bad hockey can hurt you more than a long stretch of really good hockey can help you.
Carbery: Very well put. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
I felt like we went on a run there, and we needed that to get ourselves back into a good position, standings and results-wise. But then you have a couple of off-nights where you don’t get points or two points in however many games, and you are right back in the middle of the Eastern Conference, where there is not a team under .500 in the entire Conference. I may have to do some digging on the last time it happened; on the date of December 18th, there isn’t one team in one of the Conferences that is below .500.
Where have you seen the five-on-five play of your team drop off of late?
Carbery: There is a bunch. I feel like we are not doing a good enough job with the puck. When I say that, you think offensively or off the rush, but I think it goes further back than that — to our breakouts and getting out of our defensive zone, through the neutral zone, and then once we are in the offensive zone, our ability to stay there. I don’t think we are doing as good a job as we were.
Look, it is hard. It is not easy to consistently outplay, outshot, outchance, and out-offensive-zone-time teams in the National Hockey League. It is not an easy thing, but we had a good stretch where we were doing that consistently.
Sometimes, you don’t win games. In the middle section or second portion of the season, where we really struggled, in the majority of the games, we were doing all of those things I mentioned, but we were losing. You are thinking, “Geez, this isn’t working. Why aren’t we getting points in these games where we are playing really well with our process at five-on-five?”
We started to win some games, and now you feel good, and then the five-on-five game slips a little bit. Now, you are getting outshot and outchanced, but you still won because our special teams came through, or your goaltender played great.
It has now started to nip us a little bit. We are not doing enough to control play and focus on winning our shift. What are we doing to make sure we are on the right side of all the things I mentioned — shots, o-zone time, chances for? Usually, if you check all of those boxes, you are going to win 80% of your games.
What goes into winning puck battles? What makes a good puck retriever in the NHL?
Carbery: It’s a great question. There is a lot that goes into it. I can tell you this: It is not just size and strength. A lot of people think of a puck battle as, “If you are 6’4, 220 pounds, you automatically get to win all of the puck battles because you’re bigger and stronger.” It is just not the case. There is skill and technique involved. There is a will and a mental part to it that is a big part of it.
It is an easy thing to just slip 5% and it ends up hurting you. I talked about our ability with the puck — breakout, neutral zone, offensive zone — as hurting our game, but that is as well. We remind our group that we need to come up with 50% of those, but we want to come up with 70 or 75% of those. If you do that, usually, you have a good night with the puck and have the puck for the majority of the night. Winning puck battles and winning space is something we can do a better job of.
