Two games into calendar 2026, the Caps are still seeking their first win of the new year, and they’re still seeking to steer their way out of a tailspin that stretches back to mid-December.
Saturday night’s homestand opener against Chicago produced a standings point for Washington in a 3-2 shootout loss, but the Caps also lost winger Tom Wilson to a lower body injury in the first period of the game.
In a low-scoring affair in which the Caps hit the post or the crossbar at least four times and air-mailed a few other good scoring opportunities, the absences of Wilson and Aliaksei Protas – the team’s top two goal scorers – loomed large by night’s end.
“He’s the heart and soul of this team,” says Caps goaltender Logan Thompson, who made 31 saves in a losing effort, a big reason why the Caps were able to scratch out a point from Saturday’s game. “It’s a huge loss; we’re already down Protas and [P-L Dubois], so those are three big game players for us.
“So, we dug deep, we worked hard, we didn’t quit, we got a point, and hopefully Tom’s okay.”
Wilson departed the game late in the first period with the score even at 1-1. Earlier in the period, he took a Louis Crevier stick to the nether regions, an infraction that went unseen/uncalled. A shift or two later, Wilson got tangled with Chicago’s Connor Murphy behind the Hawks’ net, and the Washington winger went down awkwardly. He rose slowly, then limped off gingerly and did not return.
“We’ll know more [Sunday],” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “But I don’t think it’s too bad.”
Protas, who was on the ice for Saturday’s morning skate, did not dress for the game and he is “TBD” with a lower body injury, according to Carbery. Protas went into the boards awkwardly late in the first period of Thursday’s game in Ottawa, but he returned and scored what was a big goal at the time late in the period.
Wilson was ill and missed Washington’s Dec. 23 game with the Rangers, a game in which the Caps lost hold of a 3-2 third-period lead, yielding five unanswered goals to the Blueshirts in the final frame of a 7-3 loss. The Caps also dropped the only game he missed last season, a Feb. 27, 2025 home game against St. Louis.
“Significant, huge,” says Carbery of the impact of Wilson’s absence. “He’s a big part of our team, not only for the things he does on the ice, but just for the leadership, bench presence, and all the different things that he brings. He is a big part of our group.”
Chicago scored on its first shot of the game, just 73 seconds into the contest. The Caps left Ryan Donato alone down low, right at the top of the paint. And when the puck came to Ilya Mikheyev at the blueline, he fired it back toward the net with some air underneath it, and Donato deflected it past Thompson to lift the visitors to an early lead.
Washington was able to issue a prompt response to the Donato goal. From the left half wall, Dylan Strome fed Ethen Frank in the high slot. Frank crept in slightly before firing a wrist shot, which Hawks goaltender Spencer Knight kicked out, but it went right to Strome’s tape and he fired it to the twine, biting the hand that once fed him to tie the game at 1-1 at 4:46 of the first frame.
The Hawks regained the lead on a power play early in the second period, with Teuvo Teravainen converting a Tyler Bertuzzi feed from a difficult angle down low on the left side at 4:24. Teravainen’s precision shot made it a 2-1 game, and it stayed that way into the third period.
For much of the game’s first 40 minutes, the Caps were guilty of prolonging shifts in their own end with broken breakouts or coverage errors that kept Chicago shifts alive and prevented Washington from testing Knight more than it did.
“It seemed like they were hard on the forecheck, and our forwards didn’t really do a great job of helping out the [defensemen] to get out of our zone,” says Strome. “And when that happens, you get hemmed in, and then you’re kind of tired when you go and try to play offense, and the cycle continues.
“We’ve got to find a way to break pucks out better. Our [defensive] zone coverage wasn’t great tonight; we had a few times tonight where they got the puck pretty clearly in the slot, off a breakout. So, just some things to clean up; we’ll take the point and move on.”
The Hawks also used their speed to generate several odd man breaks, and the Caps needed Thompson to come up with several key stops, most notably one on Mikheyev early in the second period and on Bertuzzi in transition in the third, in the aftermath of a Washington turnover.
Without their top two goal scorers in the lineup, the Caps needed someone to step up. And in the third period, that someone was Ryan Leonard.
Upon entering the Chicago zone, the Caps worked the puck from low to high, and Matt Roy let a wrist shy fly from the right point. Leonard out-jousted Chicago defenseman Matt Grzelcyk at the top of the paint and got just enough of Roy’s shot to have the puck eke past night and over the goal line, knotting the score at 2-2 with 8:42 left in the third period.
Leonard’s goal helped the Caps earn a point, and without Wilson and Protas, he and Justin Sourdif both cracked the 20-minute barrier in ice time for the first time in their respective NHL careers.
“I don’t know if I can really fill that role with what he has,” says Leonard. “But everyone tried to do their best to pitch in and [deliver] what we were missing. We fought really hard, though.”
John Carlson nearly won it for Washington in the waning seconds of regulation, but his shot from in tight went off the outside of the post, one of several instances of the Caps dinging the iron on this Saturday night.
In the shootout – which went six rounds – the Caps scored more than once for the first time all season; Strome and Sonny Milano both connected in the skills competition. But Chicago captain Nick Foligno won it for the Hawks, giving Chicago its first set of consecutive victories since Nov. 15-18 of last year.
“I liked what we did in the first two [periods],” says Chicago coach Jeff Blashill. “I think in the first period we had a lot of zone time where we were grinding, and in the second, he had that, but we also did a really good job of track/gap transition, denying them out of their zone and denying them entries, and then able to transition.
“I was happy with both those things. Obviously, in the third, they pushed. We couldn’t quite get on top of them, so they were on top of us a little bit more. I thought we defended pretty good, I thought we had pretty good poise.
“They ended up scoring a goal, but we stayed with it and found a way to win.”
The Caps are now 4-6-4 since their own last set of consecutive wins, which are a month in the rear view now.
