As the Montreal Canadiens’ three-way goal continues, one of their former goalies contributed to the Washington Capitals’ resurgence.
Away from the spotlight of Quebec cameras, Charlie Lindgren has just won his last three games, including a 3-0 shutout against the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday. The 28-year-old athlete made 35 saves against the reigning Stanley Cup champions and now his team, which struggled in the early days of the regular season, sits second in the National League’s Metropolitan Section with 18 points. On an individual level, success results in a goals against average of 1.76 and an efficiency ratio of 0.947 for the current season.
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Alexander Ovechkin’s gang won’t complain about the amazing performance of Lindgren, who replaced Darcy Kuemper, who was recently injured and has a sub-.900 batting average this year. Unsurprisingly, he received several compliments from his head coach Spencer Carbery at the end of a night of work in which he twice frustrated William Karlsson on a breakaway as well as Ivan Barbashev in particular.
“He is the reason for the victory,” the driver admitted on the team website. He was fantastic all evening. You can make a list of breakaways, successful close-range saves, hidden shots, and shot deflections and returns. He mastered everything despite the opponent’s forecheck.”
“Certainly he made a timely save,” admitted Knights coach Bruce Cassidy, whose team will visit the Canadian on Thursday. I can’t sit here and say we didn’t have any chances to score. We had four or five solo runs against the goalkeeper. He plays well and blocks what he sees. Could we create second chances to score plays? We had a few when we were 1-0 down.”
Rising
While Lindgren expressed his satisfaction with this third career step and said that he felt good in training and games, his famous teammate Ovechkin remained silent in the results list. However, No. 8 has had some good times recently, including finding the net twice against the New York Islanders on Saturday. He has 826 lifetime goals in the National League, compared to 894 for league leader Wayne Gretzky. This year, the Russian scored 11 points, including four goals, in 14 games.
The Capitals will return to action on Saturday against the Columbus Blue Jackets.