The Importance of Charlie Lindgren Having A Good Season For Washington

The Washington Capitals have needed goaltending help for a few seasons in a row now. For the last couple of years they have run out the tandem of Ilya Samsonov and Vitek Vanecek. That didn’t work out.

Both of those young guys showed promise. Both showed for periods of time that they could be starting goalies in the NHL. At the same time, neither of those guys were able to grab that spot and run with it. Neither Samsonov or Vanecek stood in the net and said “mine!”.

Instead they both just kind of traded hot streaks, cooled off then let the other guy take the net until he started struggling. Rinse and repeat.

So instead of going with just one of those guys the Capitals decided to move on from both of them and bring in two new goalies. One was the big name and big get in free agency in Darcy Kuemper. The other is the unknown. The new backup in D.C. is none other than, Charlie Lindgren.

Lindgren has just 29 games of NHL experience at 28 years of age. In those 29 games he has a goals against average of 2.74 and a save percentage of .913%. A much higher goals against than you would want, but a pretty good save percentage considering how high the GAA is.

Lindgren is coming off a very good season, but his season was extremely limited. Last season he played in just five games and he started four of those. He did go 5-0-0, and his stats were pretty great. He had a 1.22 goals against average and a save percentage of .958%.

Before that, in Montreal his stats looked like this.

3.03 GAA, .908 SV%

4.62 GAA, .898 SV% (just one game played that season)

3.33 GAA, .888 SV%

In that time he played in 21 games, pretty much the bulk of his NHL experience.

Those Canadiens teams were not very good. The 17-18 team finished with just 71 points, the 18-19 team was better at 96, but Lindgren played in just one game. Then they went back down to 71 points the next season, his last in MTL.

In saying all of this, you could simply boil it down to this. It’s very hard to know what to expect from this player. I’m going to go ahead and guess you probably will not get another 1.22 GAA from him in a full season. The .958 save percentage is unlikely as well. But the Capitals do need him to perform well.

Backups in the NHL get more playing time than they used to. Starters used to get 60+ games, even more in some cases. Now teams seem to want to keep their starters around 55, or somewhere close to there. That doesn’t sound like a big increase for the backup, but you’re now talking about a guy playing in 20-30 games compared to 15 or somewhere in there. That is a lot more points up for grab obviously. Even if it is the minimum of just five more games that is 10 points you could be dropping if your backup isn’t winning you games.

There isn’t much concern about Darcy Kuemper performing. At least not in the regular season for me. His career high in starts came last season at 57, the previous high before that was 55. Before that his high was 31 all the way back in 2014-15. Again, somewhere around 55 is probably where you want him, giving Lindgren around 25 starts.

The Capitals have nine back to backs this season. More than likely there is nine starts for Lindgren right there. When you look at the schedule there are a couple of rough stretches for the Capitals. There are periods of times where there are games crammed in a short amount of time.

The season starts okay for Washington. October is somewhat lighter. Then, at the end of October and the very beginning of November they have a back to back. That starts a stretch where they play a game every other day all the way up to the 19th. That is 11 games in 20 days.

That isn’t the busiest streak you will see, but there are some tough teams in there. Those teams include Vegas, Edmonton, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Florida, St. Louis and Colorado.

December has 15 games in the 31 day month. That is basically a game every other day as well. There is one two day break on the 20th and 21st and that is followed up by the three day Christmas break. The end of November and the beginning of December also gives the Caps a six game road trip and playing 8 out of 9 on the road. That is a lot of time on the road and against teams from the western conference. That could be a big spot for Lindgren.

The back half of the schedule isn’t too rough. After the all-star break they will play in 29 games in about 60 days. Potentially the hardest and the most compacted is the end of March. In 17 days from the middle of the month to the end they will play 9 games. In that time there is a back to back and they play teams like the Blues, the Penguins, the Lightning, the Islanders, the Rangers and the Wild. Four of those are on the road and, again, that should give the Capitals back up some time in net which is hopefully Lindgren.

The backup goalie position is becoming more important. As teams want to give their starter more rest and help them be more fresh come playoff time that means the backups have to come in and help teams win games and secure some points in the standings.

The Capitals play in a really, really tough division and conference. When you look at the eastern conference it is pretty hard to find bad teams. Even the bad teams seem to be on the up in terms of their rebuild.

Washington will have to battle for a lot of this season if I had to guess. They should be a playoff team, Kuemper should play the majority of games, but Lindgren will get his time. When he does play the Caps need him to perform.

If the Caps don’t get good backup play from Lindgren, or anyone else for that matter, they could find themselves in a tricky spot. Battling for lower seeds in the playoff race and having to play better teams in the first round, or potentially battle for a playoff spot all together.

It’s a big season for Charlie Lindgren. Washington is surely hoping they get what St. Louis got last season and not what Montreal got for the majority of his career.