The Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins go head to head at PPG Paints Arena on ABC and ESPN plus. The Caps are red hot and the Penguins aren't but despite where they are in the standings a rivalry is a rivalry and the Caps need to come out of the break showing why they are the beasts of the Eastern Conference.
#3 Win the shot battle
In the last contest the Capitals held the Penguins to just 19 shots en route to a 4-1 win. The Penguins would take the first meeting at Capital One Arena 4-2 in a game where Alex Ovechkin was held without a shot on goal.
The Caps are a good team that can generate shots from top to bottom from the forwards to the defense. And it's been thanks in large parts to the core still around and the new pieces they added over the summer all under the leadership of Spencer Carbery who doesn't believe in sophomore slumps.
From July 19 through July 1, in a span of 13 days, the Caps added seven NHL players to their roster and all of them were under the age of 30 in forwards Pierre Luc-Dubois (26), Andrew Mangiapane (28), Brandon Duhaime (27), Taylor Raddysh (26) and defensemen Jakob Chychrun (26) and Matt Roy (29) and goaltender Logan Thompson (27).
Carbery has guided the Capitals to a record of 36-11-8 which is good for 80 points through 55 games this season. In his first season as head coach in 2023-24, Carbery led the Capitals to a playoff berth with a record of 40-31-11 (91 points) which marked an 11 point improvement from the previous season where they went 35-37-10 (80 points).
At Carbery's two previous head coaching stops, Carbery's teams saw an improvment in point percentage in year two. With the South Carolina Stingrays of the ECHL in 2011-12 his point percentage was .563 and it jumped up to .583 the next year.
Then in 2018-19 with the Hershey Bears of the AHL his point percentage was .618 but the next year it jumped up to .653.