For the fifth straight season, the Washington Capitals will start their 82-game regular season schedule here in the District. The Caps open their 2025-26 slate on Wed. Oct. 8 against the Boston Bruins, the third time in the last eight seasons they’ve kicked off the campaign at home against Boston; they also did so in 2018-19 and 2022-23. The Caps haven’t opened on the road since the pandemic-abbreviated 2020-21 season when they opened with a four-game road trip, two games in Buffalo followed by a pair in Pittsburgh.
Three nights after this season’s opener against the Bruins, the Caps break the seal on the road portion of their schedule with a weekend set of back-to-backs against the Islanders (Oct. 11) and the Rangers (Oct. 12).
The NHL’s 2025-26 schedule features a lengthy February pause of just under three weeks to accommodate player participation in the 2026 Olympic Games in Milano and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Washington hosts Nashville on Feb. 5 and won’t play again until Philadelphia visits on Feb. 25.
Setting aside that 19-day break in February, the Caps will play the first 41 games of the season in a span of 86 days – reaching the midway mark of the campaign on New Year’s Day in Ottawa – and they will play the second 41 games in a span of 84 days.
Lengthy homestands are abundant for the Caps this season; they’ll have three homestands of four games in duration, their longest homestays of 2025-26. Washington will also have a quartet of three-game homestands, one of which is sandwiched around the February pause. Two dozen of the Caps’ home games come in those seven homestands, and they also have three homestays of two games in length and 11 single home games.
A six-game road trip to Western Canada – plus Colorado, Seattle and Detroit – in the back half of January eats up the biggest chunk of Washington’s road slate this season. The journey begins on Jan. 19 in Denver and concludes on Jan. 29 in Motown. In addition to their season-long six-game trip in January, the Caps could be looking at two four-game trips and a pair of three-game journeys as well, depending on how they choose to handle the travel for those stretches.
Other noteworthy nuggets from the first look at the Caps’ 2025-26 schedule:
- Washington will play 14 afternoon games this season, eight of them at home and six on the road. The Caps have at least one afternoon home date every month with the exception of February
- Washington has 14 sets of games on back-to-back dates this season, eight in the first half and six in the back half of the campaign
- The Caps will conclude their season’s set of three games with the Tampa Bay Lightning on Nov. 22 in Washington, doing so before facing 10 different Eastern Conference opponents for the first time in 2025-26
- Washington’s most home-heavy stretch is from Nov. 15-28, a span in which the Caps play seven of eight games at home with just a single night on the road, the back end of a set of back-to-backs in Montreal on Nov. 20
- The Caps will play weekend back-to-back home-and-home sets against the same opponent twice this season (Dec. 20-21 vs. Detroit and April 11-12 vs. Pittsburgh)
- Washington will play a total of 27 games – nearly a third of the season – before leaving the Eastern Time Zone for multiple games for the first time. The Caps’ only venture outside the time zone in the season’s first two months is a one-game journey to Dallas on Oct. 28
- Philadelphia is the last Eastern Conference team the Caps will face for the first time. The Caps visit Philly on Feb. 3 in their final road game before the Olympic pause. That’s the first of their four meetings with the Flyers in 2025-26, and it comes in game No. 58 on the season, after the Caps have already concluded their season series with six Pacific, four Central, three Atlantic and one Metropolitan Division team. The Caps face the Flyers four times in a span of 18 games from Feb. 3-March 31
- Carolina and Pittsburgh are the two Metropolitan Division teams the Caps face just three times this season. Washington visits Carolina just once this season (on Nov. 11) and Pittsburgh visits the District just once, for the Caps’ final home game of the season on April 12
- The Caps have two 11-game stretches in which they must travel for each game; one of those stretches comes early in the season (Oct. 24-Nov. 15, a span of 23 days) and the other comes at the very tail end of the campaign (March 24-April 14, a span of 22 days)
- Not including the NHL’s annual three-day holiday break (Dec. 24-26) and its February pause for the Olympics, the Caps will have 16 multi-day gaps between games this season. Five of those come in October, all of them two-day breaks. November and December each offer one two-day and one three-day break from the rigors of the rink, and a busy January offers just one two-day break. In March, the Caps have a pair of two-day breaks and a pair of three-day respites, and they will have two two-day gaps in April
- As was the case in 2024-25, one of Washington’s busiest stretches of the season will be the period between the pauses; the span between the end of the NHL’s holiday break and the onset of its Olympic pause in early February. The Caps will play 22 games in 41 days over that span in 2025-26, playing 10 games at home and a dozen on the road, with three sets of back-to-back games and only one multi-day break of two days between games. Last season’s similar stretch wasn’t quite as arduous; it consisted of 21 games in 44 days, and the Caps managed an impressive 13-2-6 record (.762 point percentage) across those six plus weeks
By the day:
Sunday (9): Four at home, five on the road
Monday (7): Five at home, two on the road
Tuesday (14): Six at home, eight on the road
Wednesday (12): Eight at home, four on the road
Thursday (12): Four at home, eight on the road
Friday (9): Five at home, four on the road
Saturday (19): Nine at home, 10 on the road
By the month:
October (11): Seven at home, four on the road
November (15): Eight at home, seven on the road
December (14): Six at home, eight on the road
January (16): Seven at home, nine on the road
February (6): Four at home, two on the road
March (13): Seven at home, six on the road
April (7): Two at home, five on the road
