March 24 vs. St. Louis Blues at Enterprise Center
Time: 8:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN/Caps Radio Network
Washington Capitals (35-27-9)
St. Louis Blues (28-30-11)
The Caps embark upon their last multi-game road trip of the 2025-26 season and play the last three games they must play outside the Eastern Time Zone this week in a three-game journey that starts on Tuesday night in St. Louis against the Blues.
As they head out on the road this week, the Caps carry with them a five-game point streak (3-0-2). Washington concluded a four-game homestand on Sunday afternoon with a 3-2 overtime loss to the NHL’s top team, the Colorado Avalanche. The Caps carried a 1-0 lead into the third period of that contest against the Avs, so Washington dips to 26-1-2 in games in which it leads heading into the game’s final 20 minutes.
“It’s hard to say you let a game slip like that,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “But we’re leading the game going into the third period, 1-0. So, in that sense [yes]. But when you look at the underlying numbers, they’ve got us out-chanced – not a significant [amount], but a little bit – and those games can go either way. You’re protecting a lead and you give one back, so it’s 1-1.
“But overall, I thought we played a pretty good hockey game. We make a few mistakes, they make one more play in overtime; we couldn’t get [players] off [the ice], we had that puck.”
Caps captain Alex Ovechkin scored a power-play goal in the back half of the third period in Sunday’s game against the Avalanche, and that goal tied the game at 2-2, forcing overtime and enabling the Caps to scrape a point from the overtime loss.
Ovechkin’s goal was his first power-play goal in front of the home folks this season, and it’s also his first power-play goal that came on his patented one-timer from his left circle office on the man advantage. Most notably, it was the 923rd goal of Ovechkin’s career, and when combined with his 77 lamplighters in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, it gives him 1,000 for his career.
And 19-year-old Cole Hutson – the only one of Ovechkin’s Washington teammates over the years who was born after the Caps captain started his own NHL career in 2005 – picked up his first career assist on the goal.
“It’s just another accolade for him in his incredible career,” says Carbery. “And to get a thousand goals and to do it on home ice and do it in the way [he did], I like the way things are done. I thought that the Islanders and how he scored [his record-breaking 895th goal] there and the celebration of that iconic moment.
“And this is obviously not on that stage, but on the power play, his office, huge goal to tie that game late in the third period, it’s a big goal. So, it was a big moment.”
When the Caps came out of the Olympic break on Feb. 25, they were four points shy of a playoff berth. Nearly a month later, they find themselves six points shy of achieving their goal; although the Caps have pulled points in 12 of their last 17 games overall (10-5-2), they’ve split a dozen games since the Olympic break (6-4-2) while many of the teams they’re competing with for playoff positioning have been winning at a more consistent clip.
In their most recent road outing on March 12 in Buffalo, the Caps came from behind to eke out a 2-1 victory over the Sabres, the lone loss suffered by Buffalo across a span of 14 games (13-1-0).
Caps goaltender Logan Thompson has carried a shutout into the third period of each of his last three starts, and he has done so a dozen times in his 49 starts this season. Since coming off injured reserve to start the Caps’ final game ahead of the Olympic break – on Feb. 5 vs. Nashville – only Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy (12) has made more starts than Thompson (11), who is 6-3-2 across that span with a 2.09 GAA and a .924 save pct.
Among all goalies with at least 35 appearances across the entire season, Thompson’s .914 save pct. ranks third in the NHL, as does his 2.38 GAA.
Thompson has given the Caps a chance to win virtually every game he has started this season. Since he came off injured reserve for that Feb. 5 game against Nashville, the Caps have yielded an average of 2.46 goals against per game, ranking seventh in the League across that span. But Washington has averaged only 2.69 goals per game over that 11-game span, ranking 23rd in the circuit in that department.
Goals are always harder to come by at this time of year.
“Anytime you get closer to the end of the regular season, obviously, it's a long year,” says Caps forward Justin Sourdif, who scored the Caps’ first goal in Sunday’s game. “A lot of it was a condensed schedule with the Olympics, and guys are tired, and we're battling, and it kind of gets closer to playoff hockey.
“It's really tight games, tight checking. It's kind of like a chess match, moving back and forth, trying to control play. And we just have to learn how to win those 2-1 hockey games and defend well. [Thompson] is always bailing us out, and we'd like to put a couple more in the net for him, and we're just going to look to do that in St Louis.”
The Blues are two points further from the playoff chase in the Western Conference than the Caps are in their quest to land one of the eight Eastern Conference playoff berths; the Blues are eight points south of the playoff cutline while the Caps are half a dozen points shy.
St. Louis went from its season opener last Oct. 9 all the way to March 1 without stringing together more than two victories in succession at any point. But the Blues won four straight games at the start of this month, and St. Louis enters Tuesday’s game with an impressive 7-1-2 record in its last 10 games. One quarter of the Blues’ win total for the entire season has been achieved since the beginning of the month.
Most recently, the Blues finished of a 1-1-1 road trip through Western Canada with a 3-1 victory over the Canucks in Vancouver on Saturday night. For St. Louis, Tuesday’s game against the Capitals starts a three-game homestand. San Jose visits on Thursday followed by Toronto on Saturday, and then the Blues take off on a four-game road journey to California and Colorado.
