May 10 vs. Carolina Hurricanes at Lenovo Center
Time: 6:00 p.m.
TV: TNT, truTV, MAX
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps Radio 24/7
Washington Capitals (51-22-9)
Carolina Hurricanes (47-30-5)
Game 3 – Series is even at 1-1
With their 3-1 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes on Thursday in Game 2 of the best-of-seven second-round playoff series, the Capitals squared the series at a game apiece, shrinking it to a best-of-five set. But in dropping Tuesday’s Game 1 in a 2-1 overtime decision, the Caps surrendered their home ice advantage in the series with the Canes. The series shifts in a southerly direction for the next two games, beginning with Saturday’s Game 3 in Raleigh, the first of two opportunities the Capitals will have to regain that home ice advantage in the next few days. Game 4 is Monday night in Raleigh.
“It’s going to obviously be a tough couple of games,” says Washington winger Andrew Mangiapane. “We can’t go in thinking it’s going to be easy or anything. I’m sure their crowds and their atmosphere are going to be loud, and we’ve just got to go in there and play our game and be comfortable and embrace that villain attitude. There’s going to be a lot of booing and cheering going on, so just embrace it and have fun with it.”
In rebounding from a difficult outing in Game 1, the Caps did what they’ve been doing all season, making sure that losing streaks don’t fester and following up the occasional bad beat with a sturdier effort in their next outing.
Tom Wilson “led the charge” for Washington in Thursday’s Game 2, according to Caps coach Spencer Carbery. In addition to a couple of critical shot blocks – one in the waning minutes in each of the game’s first two periods – Wilson earned the primary assist on John Carlson’s game-winner on the power play early in the third. With the Caps nursing a 2-1 lead late in the game, Wilson delivered an empty net goal to alleviate the Hurricanes’ late pressure.
“He’s been doing it all year long,” says Caps forward Connor McMichael, who started the scoring in Game 2 with his fourth goal of the playoffs. “It’s nothing new with that guy. When we need a spark, he’s there to provide it. And if you need a big play or a big goal, he’s the one doing it. You can’t say enough good things about him.”
Wilson has picked up at least a point in each of Washington’s five playoff victories this spring.
Washington became just the third team since 2005-06 to string together consecutive games with more than 30 blocked shots on Thursday, and Logan Thompson took care of most of the rest of Carolina’s onslaught of shots on net, which numbered 28 on Thursday. Only Shayne Gostisbehere’s one-timer on the power play got behind Thompson, who narrowly missed stopping that one as well.
With 22.84 shot blocks per 60 minutes in the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs, the Caps lead the field of 16 teams that entered the postseason.
“Obviously, we’ve got a pretty good goalie back there as well,” says Caps defenseman Rasmus Sandin. “But we just want to help him out a little bit sometimes. But it’s playoffs too, so I think everyone wants to be hurting a little bit. You just want those pucks to hit you.”
Two games into this series, Carolina continues to dominate territorially and in possession, but the Canes also haven’t led on the scoreboard at any point during either game; they prevailed in Game 1 on Jaccob Slavin’s goal early in overtime.
“The way that we played and some adjustments we made, I feel like we’re getting there,” says Carbery. “Guys can feel it, we’re getting a little more confident. We feel like we can punch back and we feel like we’re right there in [Game 2] and now, ‘Okay, we can carry play for a while and we can keep this going.’ And now it’s about sustaining it and being able to protect the lead and all the different stuff.
“So, it was a positive to A) get on the board and win a game and get this series knotted up, but also to give us some confidence, and hopefully we can to one mere level, because we’re going to need it. Going down there, we’re going to have to get a little bit better and we’ll make a few more adjustments and look at that.”
One area in which Washington won’t need to make adjustments is defending in front of Thompson. Seven games deep into the playoffs, the Caps have yielded just nine goals against at 5-on-5, and they’ve been nicked for just seven goals against in their five games at Capital One Arena. They’ve permitted the fewest goals against per game at home (1.4) in the playoffs as well.
“Part of what we’ve done well for a majority of the year is, inevitably you’re going to spend some time in your defensive zone; it’s going to happen, especially when you’re playing a good team,” says Carbery. “And then, on top of that, you’re playing one of the top offensive zone teams in the National Hockey League. So we have to rely on our structure – and some key principles that we have inside of our structure – so that even when they’re in there, we should be able to check and defend, and to do a good job and keep things to the outside.
"So we have some things that we talk about, and I thought we did a pretty good job for the most part – late in the third period and early in the first, not as good of a job – but for the majority of the game. Their deliveries to the net – which they had a decent amount; I want to say they were around 50 or 60 shot attempts tonight – we did a good job of limiting them to one and then not giving them a secondary look off of that and finding our exit or our breakout after that initial shot.”
During Carbery’s two-season tenure as the Caps’ bench boss, Washington has won only one of its four regular season visits to Raleigh, and it needed a shootout to prevail by a 2-1 count in that Dec. 17, 2023 contest. But each of those four visits here was the back half of a set of back-to-back games for the Capitals while the Hurricanes were more rested for each of those contests.
That won’t be the case for Games 3 and 4 here.
“I have a lot of belief in our group,” says Carbery. “And I feel like from Game 1 to Game 2 –and significant parts of Game 2 – you could see us getting to the level that we’re going to need to play at, and it’s going to get even a little more difficult going on the road. I know the guys can feel it as well, and I have confidence that they understand that okay, we got this series back to square one. We evened it up; we did what we had to do in Game 2 to get back into the fight.
“And now, going on the road for two and them having home ice advantage, the challenge increases a little bit. And that means that we’re going to have to meet that challenge with our game and the things that we’re doing on the ice for 60 minutes are going to have to get better. And I think that they know that and embrace that. I genuinely believe that we can play better, and hopefully that comes to fruition in Game 3.”
