October 5 vs. Boston Bruins at Capital One Arena

Time: 5 p.m.

TV: MNMT

Radio: Team 980, Caps Radio 24/7

Boston Bruins (2-3-1)

Washington Capitals (2-3-0)

Exactly a week ahead of their season-opening contest against the New Jersey Devils, the Capitals conclude their six-game exhibition slate when they host the Boston Bruins at Capital One Arena. The Caps and Bruins tangled earlier in the preseason in Boston, with the Bruins earning a 4-2 victory in that Sept. 24 game in Beantown.

It’s been just over two weeks since the Caps opened their 2024 training camp with nearly six dozen players on the roster. As the Caps prepare for Saturday’s game, there are still 26 healthy players on a camp roster that must be trimmed to 23 by 5 p.m. Monday, the NHL’s deadline for submission of opening night rosters.

On Friday afternoon, the Caps waived center Mike Sgarbossa and defenseman Ethan Bear, as well as injured forward Luke Philp. If those players go unclaimed by 2 p.m. on Saturday, each is expected to be loaned to AHL Hershey.

Only 20 of the remaining 26 players – 15 forwards, eight defensemen and three goaltenders – will be able to suit up for Saturday’s preseason finale, and any other waiver-eligible players cut before Monday’s roster deadline must be placed on waivers by 2 p.m. Sunday, in order that they may clear by 2 p.m. Monday, in time for the roster deadline.

Typically, teams use the final preseason game as a sort of “dress rehearsal” for their opening night lineup. But typically, teams don’t have a week between their last preseason game and their season opener. And to make matters murkier, the Caps are still the process of making decisions as far as the makeup of their opening night roster is concerned. They’ve still got some personnel decisions to make, and that last preseason game could be useful in that regard.

“We have a fairly good idea of what things will look like from [Dylan] Strome’s line to [P-L] Dubois, [Nic] Dowd, and our [defense] pairs,” said Caps coach Spencer Carbery on Thursday. “But there’s also a little bit of runway here, and that to the determination of what our opening night roster looks like and the jockeying for those 23 spots. We’ll get some clarity in the next three or four days.”

The Caps seem to have successfully integrated seven new offseason acquisitions into their lineup; they’ve been generally pleased with how four new forwards have fit in on the Strome, Dubois and Dowd lines, how two new blueliners have fit into the team’s top four on the defense depth chart, and how Logan Thompson has played in net as Charlie Lindgren’s backstopping partner this season.

The one forward line that remains vexing is made up of a trio of players returning from last season’s roster: Sonny Milano, Hendrix Lapierre and Aliaksei Protas. The trio hasn’t displayed the chemistry and especially the connectedness we’ve seen from the other three lines, and three forwards on the roster bubble – Andrew Cristall, Ivan Miroshnichenko and Jakub Vrana – are still in camp, vying for the 13th forward slot and/or to push a member of the aforementioned trio aside.

“In those internal competitions,” says Carbery, “I feel like some guys have separated themselves at times, and then have come back to the pack. So that – good or bad – has made it a bit more challenging in the evaluation process.”

Then there’s the matter of the schedule. The Caps’ preseason schedule consists of six games this fall, and the first four of those contests were played in a span of just six nights. But the last two exhibition tune-ups are scattered over a dozen nights leading up to the team’s Oct. 12 season opener against the New Jersey Devils, a team that will be playing its fourth regular season game that same night.

How then, do the Caps go about setting their lineup for Saturday’s game against the Bruins? Do they give their full varsity lineup a night’s worth of reps, knowing it will be another full week before they play a game that matters, or do they sprinkle in some bubble players for one last look before decision time arrives on Sunday?

“We’ve gone back and forth,” said Carbery on Thursday. “There’s two schools of thought, and I don’t think there’s a right and a wrong; it’s what makes the most sense for your individual or your team’s scenario. The one side of the coin is you just dress your opening night roster, or your opening night lineup, and you try to get as many minutes as you can – 60 minutes – of them playing together and getting comfortable with one another. And then the other side of the coin is you need to see some players to make some decisions. And so that would be then sitting out some guys that are – for all intents and purposes – going to be in the lineup for opening night. There are pros and cons to both, and we’ll have to sort that out within the next 24 hours.”

Cristall, the team’s second-round pick from the 2023 NHL Draft, has flashed his offensive ability during camp, and that has earned him another look in Saturday’s preseason finale. He is slated to skate the left side of a line with Lapierre in the middle and Protas on the right. The rest of the Caps’ roster for Saturday’s game against the Bruins is comprised of what we might reasonably expect to see on opening night.

As a 19-year-old who doesn’t turn 20 until February, Cristall is too young to play in the American Hockey League this season. He has to either make the Washington roster or be returned to his Kelowna junior team in the WHL. The Caps are able to keep Cristall on their roster without burning a year of eligibility on his entry level contract as long as he plays fewer than 10 games in the NHL in 2024-25.

At the outset of the 2021-22 season, the Caps kept Lapierre – who was also 19 at the time – on the roster for the first few weeks of the regular season in a similar situation. Lapierre saw action in six games – memorably scoring his first NHL goal on opening night against the New York Rangers – before being returned to his junior club in the QMJHL. In theory, the Capitals could do the same with Cristall, but they may be reluctant to risk losing another asset – via waivers – for the privilege of keeping the youngster in Washington for a few weeks.

That said, Cristall has been impressive and he is expected to play again on Saturday. He saw action in one preseason game last fall, and three in this year’s camp, and he has registered a point in all four games (two goals, two assists). If he is able to summon another strong performance against Boston, he could give the Caps – an offensively challenged outfit at times last season – something to think about.

Boston is playing its seventh and final preseason game here on Saturday. The Bruins’ most recent game was a neutral site – Quebec City – contest against the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday night. Behind a Quinton Byfield hat trick the Kings prevailed by a 4-1 count in that game.

Most of the Bruins’ training camp drama has centered around goaltender Jeremy Swayman, who remains a contract holdout with Boston’s season opener looming just ahead on the horizon; the B’s open in Florida against the defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers on Tuesday night. The 25-year-old Swayman has averaged 24 wins over the last three seasons –posting strong qualitative numbers in the process – while sharing the net with Linus Ullmark. The Bruins dealt Ullmark to Ottawa over the summer, getting veteran goaltender Joonas Korpisalo back in return.

With Swayman’s status still unsettled, the Bruins claimed netminder Jira Patera off waivers from Vegas earlier this week. Patera, a 25-year-old native of the Czech Republic, has eight games worth of NHL experience over the last two seasons with the Golden Knights.