Dec. 27 vs. New Jersey Devils at Prudential Center
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN/Caps Radio Network
Washington Capitals (19-13-5)
New Jersey Devils (20-16-1)
After three full days away from the rigors of the rink, the Caps jump back into the thick of the regular season schedule on Saturday night in New Jersey, where they’ll play the first of two road games against the Devils.
Saturday night’s date with the Devils kicks off a busy stretch of hockey for the Capitals, who will play their next 22 games – just over a quarter of a full season’s slate – in a span of just 41 nights. Washington played its first 22 games this season over a much more leisurely 46 nights.
After catching fire in mid-November and staying hot for about three weeks, the Caps wobbled their way into the holiday break with just one victory in their last seven games (1-4-2). In their final game before the break this past Tuesday in DC against the Rangers, the Caps lost hold of a 3-2 lead after 40 minutes of play for the first time this season. The Rangers erupted for five unanswered goals in just under 10 minutes to turn that 3-2 Caps lead into a dubious 7-3 defeat.
“Yeah, it’s frustrating, it’s disappointing,” says Caps forward Connor McMichael. “It just wasn’t good enough from our group. I think we took our foot off the gas a little bit and let them carry momentum; they scored one and then they scored right away again. That’s something we’ve got to learn from, and to put that to bed right when it happens.”
Saturday’s game in New Jersey is the opener of a two-game road trip, the last two road games the Caps will play in calendar 2025. The trip concludes on Monday night in South Florida against the Panthers, and then the Caps return home for a New Year’s Eve matinee rematch against the Rangers. A day later, Washington will in in Ottawa for a New Year’s Day road game with the Senators, a contest that also represents the midway mark of the regular season for the Caps.
“I can’t remember the exact date [it was Nov. 15], but call it 20, 22 games ago [it was 19 games ago], we were sitting right at .500; I think we played New Jersey,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “Anyway, somewhere around there, we were a .500 team in the Eastern Conference, which is sitting near the bottom. So we had to get ourselves back into the fight, and we went on a run and ended up winning 10 of [12, 10-1-1].
“Now, we’ve hit a bit of a skid where we’re playing okay, but [we’re] not getting the results that we need to. So, you reset. We sit where we are; we are who we are. The next portion of the season – January – is going to determine a lot of what we’re about and where this team goes. And that’s just a fact, because if you look at our schedule, and what we’re about to embark on at the end of December and into January, it’s ‘go’ time.”
Coming out of their three-day break for the Christmas holiday, the Caps sit in seventh place in the Eastern Conference standings, occupying the first wild card slot. They sit four points south of Eastern Conference-leading Carolina, and they’re seven points clear of basement-dwelling Columbus in the Eastern Conference.
Not only do the games come fast and furious straight out of the gate – four of them in the first five-and-a half days coming out of the break – but they also come against critical opponents. Starting with Saturday’s game in Newark, the Caps face each of the four teams immediately behind them in the Eastern Conference standings: New Jersey, Florida, the Rangers and Ottawa.
Washington’s three-week hot spell over a dozen games provided little in the way of standings equity, but a slide of roughly half that length has dropped it seven slots in the Conference standings.
“We went on a run there, and we needed that to get ourselves back into a good position, standings and results wise,” said Carbery last week. “But then you have a couple of off nights, and you don’t get points – or you don’t get two points – in however many games it’s been, and you’re right back in the middle of all the Eastern Conference, where there’s not a team under .500 in the entire conference. I may have to do some digging on that one, the last time that has happened at the date of December [27], where there one of the conferences that doesn’t have a team under .500.”
New Jersey nipped the Caps by a 3-2 count in overtime in that aforementioned game midway through last month. The Devils fired out to an 8-1-0 start on the season, and when they walked out of Capital One Arena with two points last month, they sat at 13-4-1, atop both the Metropolitan Division and Eastern Conference standings. Injuries have been a factor, but New Jersey has won only seven of 19 games (7-12-0) since, and its .368 points percentage is better than that of only Winnipeg and Chicago across that span.
Prior to the break, the Devils got center Jack Hughes and defenseman Brett Pesce back in their lineup. Hughes missed 18 and Pesce was absent from two dozen games.
