3 players who have something to prove in the final weeks

#1 Ilya Samsonov

The goaltending competition has gone down to the wire. For a while it looked like Vitek Vanecek was a lock to be the number one starter come Game 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. He rebounded from a bad stretch and finally got a win yesterday.

Ilya Samsonov has been on the upswing lately. So why does he have a lot to prove? It’s simple. It is now his job to lose. I knew before the season it was going to come down to this. Caps brass is watching both of them very closely to decide who they’ll go with not just in the playoffs but next season and beyond.

Vanecek is 18-11-5 with a 2.58 goals against average and a .912 save percentage. He made 28 saves in the Caps win over the Bruins and has won two of his last five games. Samsonov is 21-9-4 with a 2.95 goals against average and a .899 save percentage. He let some goals get by him in Pittsburgh but made the key saves when he needed to, 29 total.

The momentum is certainly on Samsonov’s side as he has won four of his last five games. The loss against the Carolina Hurricanes also didn’t count against him as Samsonov came onto that game in relief.