Like they did last season, the Washington Capitals will have to navigate a significant number of back-to-back games in 2026-27.
Washington has 14 total back-to-back games this season, tied for the second-most in the NHL with the Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres, Florida Panthers and Ottawa Senators. The rival Pittsburgh Penguins have the most back-to-backs with 15 this upcoming season.
It's not an unfamiliar situation for D.C., who also played in 14 sets of back-to-backs a season ago and went 16-12 over those 28 games. Washington only managed back-to-back wins in four of those 14 series.
It'll again mean a difficult workload for backup goaltender Charlie Lindgren, who is coming off a down year with over half of his starts coming off the second half of back-to-back series. Ten of those starts came before the Olympic break.
"When I look at it overall, I mean, it was a little more challenging this year, for sure, not getting as many games," Lindgren told The Hockey News of his season. "Was maybe a little tougher, but certainly, no excuses."
In just 21 games for the Capitals this past season, Lindgren went 9-8-3 with a .879 save percentage and 3.52 GAA while playing second chair to No. 1 Logan Thompson.
"He got probably about as hard of assignment as you can get this year with his starts. And when I went through him, he gave us a lot of really good starts in really tough situations," general manager Chris Patrick said of Lindgren. "I know the numbers probably on the stat sheet don't look great, but he went in there and battled.. I appreciate what Charlie did. It's not an easy job to fill that role. He did it really well, and he's obviously a huge part of the room and a really good partner for Logan."
Going into this year, the 32-year-old is looking to bounce back and show that he's still a reliable go-to option in net, while continuing to support Thompson and compete for more time between the pipes.
" I have a pretty good idea of what my game looks like and what it needs to look like. I'm just going to continue to just sharpen the sword," Lindgren said at season's end. "That's what I'm going to try and do, just get to work this summer and just fine-tune all aspects of my game. I'm very, very determined right now.
"I'm not going to make excuses; I'm going to work. I'm going to work hard this summer, I'll just tell you that."
