Prior to his team’s second-round Stanley Cup playoff series with the Carolina Hurricanes, Caps coach Spencer Carbery mentioned that he believed his team had another level to get to. While the Caps got nowhere near that level in Tuesday’s 2-1 overtime loss in Game 1, they did what they’ve done all season in Thursday’s Game 2 at Capital One Arena, rebounding from a tough loss with a 3-1 victory to square the series.
Logan Thompson was again a big part of the win with several timely stops and the wisdom and wherewithal to glove down a few pucks that were off net as well, just to calm things down a bit when necessary.
Tom Wilson was also a primary driver of the bus for the Caps in Game 2. He laid out to make a pair of key shot blocks – one late in the first on Jordan Staal and the other during a scrambly final shift of the second when he smothered a shot off the twig of old friend Dmitry Orlov. Wilson also set up John Carlson’s game-winner on the power play early in the third and sealed the deal with an empty-net goal.
“I thought he was leading the charge tonight,” says Carbery of Wilson. “Even before the play he makes on the power play and on the empty netter, I just thought he was really engaged. And his line was good tonight; they did some good things forecheck wise and [offensive] zone wise. They were just a touch off on a few plays, him and [Pierre-Luc Dubois and Connor McMichael]. He was good tonight.”
Time, space and offense continued to be difficult to come by for both teams, and McMichael staked the Caps to a 1-0 lead early in the second when he scooped up a loose puck in the neutral zone – it had bounced off the noggin of Carolina blueliner Shayne Gostisbehere – and sniped a shot past Carolina’s Frederik Andersen on the ensuing breakaway to give the Caps that lead at 2:16 of the middle frame.
“It was kind of a weird play there,” recounts McMichael of his fourth goal of the playoffs. “The guy got hit in the face and the puck was just sitting there. A bit of a lucky bounce for me, but we’ll take it.”
Washington played a strong second period, almost breaking even with the Canes in second period shot attempts, and for the second time in as many games in the series, the Caps carried a precarious 1-0 lead into the third period.
“That first period, we kept at it,” said Staal. “But we lost what we like to do [in the second]. We tried a few different plays, but we really didn’t wear them down. They got some momentum and got some confidence. They started playing their game, and we started getting on our heels a little bit.”
In the second minute of the third period, Brandon Duhaime came up big by drawing a penalty on venerable Carolina blueliner Brent Burns, giving Washington its third man advantage of the game. And for the first time in Carolina's seven games in the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs, the Hurricanes' penalty killing armor was pierced.
Twenty-two seconds into the power play, Wilson found a seam and fed Carlson for a one-timer from the bottom of the left circle that gave the Caps the first multi-goal lead any team has had in the series, a 2-0 lead at 1:54.
That goal proved to be crucial when Gostisbehere cut that lead in half on a Carolina power play at 9:26 of the third.
From there, the Caps battened down the hatches and weathered the Canes’ storm. Thompson made a few critical stops late, denying a pair of deflected shots in the final five or six minutes, and thwarting Jackson Blake twice in short succession just before Wilson relieved the pressure with a massive empty-net goal with a minute left in regulation.
Former Hurricane Trevor van Riemsdyk also made a big play at a key moment late in the third, biting the hand that once fed him by expertly using his stick to break up a 2-on-1 rush that looked like trouble.
Seven games into these 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs, the Caps are defending more than they would like, for sure. They’re at the bottom of the field of 16 playoff teams, controlling an anemic 40.6 percent of all shot attempts at 5-on-5 in those seven games. But with Thompson’s stinginess in the crease and the Caps’ tenacity and willingness to block shots and take away time and space in the defensive zone, they’ve yielded just nine goals in seven games at 5-on-5, fewest of any of the eight teams which survived the first round.
Washington has won five of seven games with that unorthodox formula.
“That’s how it’s been all year,” says Thompson. “We trust our systems, we have a tremendous [defense] corps, and the forwards buy into our defense first mentality. In the first period there, we had a couple of huge blocks right in the slot, so that’s something that we’ve done all year. In playoffs, every game matters and we’re really buying in. That’s full credit to the five guys on the ice, every time.”
After yielding an unwieldy total of 94 shot attempts at all strengths to the Canes in Game 1, the Caps were only able to trim that number to 85 in Thursday’s Game 2. But they were able to at least take a little bit of a bite out of what the Canes try to do in the offensive zone, and they were able to surpass their Game 1 shot and shot attempt totals – a low bar to be sure – by the end of the second period of Thursday’s game.
“We certainly weren’t great,” says Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour. “You’ve got to give Washington credit; they played a much better game. The first goal was kind of a weird one, it goes off our defenseman for a breakaway. You don’t really see that too often. But there were other plays where they could have scored too, that would have made the game what it was.
“We’ve got to be better, that’s for sure. We knew it was going to be hard. Having said that, we were still right in the game.”
The Caps can and need to be better, too. They’re not at that level that Carbery is seeking quite yet, but they took some steps in that direction in Game 2, most crucially on the scoreboard where they evened the series ahead of Saturday night’s Game 3 in Raleigh.
“It was much better, there’s no doubt about that,” says Carbery. “We felt that, you guys saw that; it was way better. I still think we have another level to get to, and we’re going to need to get to that level, especially going down to their building.”
