Charlie Lindgren easily earns MVP against Golden Knights

The Washington Capitals have an interesting storyline at goaltender. Darcy Kuemper has struggled and now he’s hurt (more on that in the next article we do). But Charlie Lindgren has been outstanding. In Tuesday night’s win over the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights, Lindgren stopped all 35 shots he faced.

It was his first shutout as a member of the Capitals and the third shutout of his career. His record improves to 3-1-0 with a 1.76 goals against average and a .947 save percentage.

Lindgren’s only loss came on opening night to the Pittsburgh Penguins in a 4-0 defeat. If you take that loss out he’s 3-0-0 in his last three starts with a 1.01 goals against average and a .969 save percentage.

If you do the math further he has stopped 93 of the last 96 shots that he’s faced. He’s tops among goalies who have made at least three starts. The crowd was chanting “Charlie” on Tuesday throughout the game.

“Yeah I heard (the chants), that’s cool,” said Lindgren. “Again, I’ve been here for a year and a half and I can’t say enough good things about the city, the fans, the people here. Just absolutely love it here. To hear them chant my name, that was pretty cool.”

John Carlson added:

“I don’t think we played perfect but Chuckie stood on his head time after time when we needed him to. Certainly in the third period we played a lot better than the last couple of third periods with leads. So we see what it takes.”

The Capitals might be without Darcy Kuemper for some time. He left practice yesterday in a lot of pain. With the team taking a day off today, we don’t know how much time he’ll miss quite yet.

But with Lindgren in the zone lately, I wouldn’t worry too much about the goaltending the next few games.