Kings Of The Highway – The Los Angeles Kings are in the District tonight, starting a five-game road trip and supplying the opposition for the middle match of the Capitals’ season-long five-game homestand. As they embark on this trip, the Kings have played the fewest games (six) of any team in the NHL to this early juncture of the season. There are two NHL teams that have played 11 games and six more that have played 10 games to this point of the campaign.
Los Angeles is also seeking its first victory of the season; it is winless in three home games, but it has claimed points in two of its road games (0-1-2) thus far in 2026-27. Heading into Tuesday’s game with Washington, the Kings rank 31 st in the NHL in three important statistical categories: goals per game (2.00), penalty-killing proficiency (61.9 percent) and save pct. (.845).
The Caps know they’re facing a desperate and hungry team tonight, and the Kings will be getting veteran winger Mats Zuccarello back in their lineup tonight after a three-game absence. Washington is aiming to forge its first three-game winning streak of the season tonight against Los Angeles.
Step Right Up – When the Capitals opened the season on Oct. 2 in Carolina, they did so without veteran right-handed stalwart defenseman John Carlson on their roster for the first time since 2010-11, and without veteran righty Trevor van Riemsdyk for the first time since 2020-21. And when the Caps lost the services of right-handed fixture Matt Roy on Oct. 3 in Tampa, Roy’s lower body injury left the Caps with Timothy Liljegren (313 NHL games at the time), Vincent Desharnais (220) and Dylan McIlrath (105) on the right side of their defensive depth chart.
Those three righties combined for fewer NHL games (638) than van Riemsdyk alone (751) carried into the 2026-27 season. What could have been a prickly period without Roy was handled with aplomb during his absence, and the performance of Desharnais is one of the major reasons the Caps were able to flourish and play to a 4-2-0 mark while Roy was recuperating.
Eight games into his tenure with the Caps, Desharnais ranks third among NHL defensemen (six or more games) in shorthanded ice time per game (3:55) and his plus-9 goals differential at even strength is tied for fifth best in the League among all defensemen. Most remarkably, Desharnais has started just 20.83 percent of his shifts in the offensive zone, by far the lowest figure among the top 40 defensemen in goal differential this season.
“He's been phenomenal thus far, injury aside,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery of Desharnais. “I know the injury pushes him into an elevated role and more, and he's thrived. I think he has far exceeded what I expected to see from an NHL defenseman and how much he has contributed to our group in a positive way, so that's been great to see and has helped us. When you lose a key defenseman like Matt Roy, we've had the emergence of Vinny Desharnais, who has been fantastic for us. So, I’m really happy with the way that he started his season.”
The 30-year-old Desharnais signed a four-year contract as an unrestricted free agent with the Caps on July 1. The offseason additions of Jordan Kyrou, Alex Tuch and Boone Jenner generated much more ink, but Desharnais has been as important to the team’s early season success as any of Washington’s new additions.
Already toiling for his fifth NHL team in as many seasons, the seventh-round pick (183rd overall) of the Edmonton Oilers in the 2016 NHL Draft has had to work and claw his way for everything he has earned in the game, and he recently came to a mental epiphany that has changed his approach, leading to a stretch of consistent success that landed him a contract with the Caps, and hopefully some stability for what has been a nomadic career to this point.
“I think a lot of it is confidence,” says Desharnais. “I feel the mental aspect of it plays a huge role. The last couple years are what made me the player that I am today, and the reason why I'm here is just the mental aspect of it, the self-confidence.
“I grew up always seeing other people and other players, and I always thought they were better than me. And I always thought that I was not as good, and but I always worked hard, always had fun playing hockey, and that's kind of what kept me going, just the love of the game. Being a captain at Providence College and going the Frozen Four, that definitely gave me a lot of confidence, and then going to pros my first year and playing [in the ECHL], there's just lots of ups and downs, and I just kept going back to, ‘Hey, just work hard, have fun; the rest is going to take care of itself.’
“And in the last couple years, it started getting out of my head a little bit more. I was a little too much in my head, overthinking a lot of things, trying to be perfect, being really hard on myself, like hitting myself along the head for little details and little errors. So, over the years, I came to understand that hockey is a game of mistakes. They're going to happen, especially in the best League in the world.
“But if you can just focus on every single time you get on the ice of just being sharp, moving your feet, making hard plays, and – for my game – keeping it simple and just bringing that consistency day in day out, to practices and games, it's hard but once you do it, it's something that shows on a daily basis. And that's what really gave me the step over some of the guys that I was battling with. I think it was just that consistency of showing up every day, working my ass off, and having fun doing it. Some of the dog days in the season are a little bit harder to come in; you're tired, your body's tired. You've been traveling a lot, and it is just that little switch of, ‘Hey, you're playing hockey for a living. Like, I'm having the best luck of my life. Let's just enjoy it and work my ass off every day.’”
Desharnias has seen his ice time climb in each of his five NHL seasons, a great indicator of a stay-at-home defenseman’s usefulness and of his value. After averaging a career high of 18:11 with San Jose last season, Desharnais is averaging 19:54 through the first eight games of this season, and he is more than thriving along the way.
“I think it has been a good adjustment for me,” he says of joining the Caps. “Coming into a new team with new assistants [coaches], it’s a lot of ‘new’ for me, but the guys have been great at helping me out. And Roysie going down early, I think everyone helped pick up the slack. Roysie is a big part of our defense, and I think everyone stepped up; [Liljegren] stepped up, [Holl] stepped up, and [McIlrath] stepped up. Everyone had to take a little bit bigger role.
“But yeah, it’s really good to have him back tonight, and he is going to bring his calm. He’s got such a calm presence on the ice and off the ice, so it’s great to have him back tonight.”
As he watched the last six games either at home on television or high above the ice surface at Capital One Arena, Roy has developed an appreciation for his new teammate and fellow seventh-rounder. The Kings drafted Roy in the seventh round (194th overall) of the 2015 Draft, and both players are now the only active defensemen from their respective draft rounds still playing in the NHL.
That’s remarkable for a couple of guys who had to wait for the last round of their third and final season of eligibility to hear their names called on the NHL’s Draft floor.
“I’ve loved his game,” says Roy of Desharnais. “He is physical, and he is playing solid defensively and just playing his role and playing it well. It’s been great to see him start off like that.”
In The Nets – Logan Thompson makes his seventh start of the season on Tuesday against Los Angeles. On Saturday afternoon against New Jersey, Thompson notched his fourth win of the season with a 29-save performance against the Devils. He made 16 of those stops in the third period when New Jersey put on a push to shorten what was a 4-1 lead at the outset of the final period.
Each of Washington’s five wins this season has been achieved by protecting a third-period lead, and each of its three losses came in games in which it trailed, or it was even heading into the third. Thompson and Charlie Lindgren have yet to yield a lead-changing goal in the final frame of a game in 2026-27.
“What LT does there is they have probably four or five Grade A chances in the first four or five minutes,” says Carbery of the goaltender’s performance in Saturday’s divisional win over New Jersey. “If they score one of those – if one of those goes in – it’s 4-2. And there’s 16 minutes to go in the game. So, imagine that scenario if you’re sitting there, as a player, as a coach, as a fan. And now, it’s game on. He makes those five – or whatever – huge saves there, keeps them off the board, and basically calms everything down to where we’re going to be able to close this out 4-1.”
Dating back to his days with the Vegas Golden Knights, Thompson has won four straight starts over Los Angeles, going 4-0-0 with a 1.71 GAA and a .944 save pct. in those four starts; two of which came with Vegas and two of which came with Washington (h/t Carter Myers).
Lifetime against Los Angeles, Thompson is 6-2-0 in eight appearances – all of them starts – with a 2.20 GAA and a .928 save pct.
For the Kings, we are expecting to see former Caps netminder Darcy Kuemper in the nets tonight. Now in the third season of his second tour of duty with Los Angeles, Kuemper is seeking his first win of the season and making his
In seven career appearances – and starts – against the Capitals, Kuemper is 2-5-0 with a shutout, a 2.34 GAA and a .921 save pct.
All Down The Line – Here’s how the Caps and the Kings might look when they meet for the first of two times this season on Tuesday night in DC:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
89-Tuch, 17-Strome, 25-Kyrou
8-Ovechkin, 62-I. Protas, 63-Miroshnichenko
21-A. Protas, 22-Jenner, 43-Wilson
72-Beauvillier, 76-Brodzinski, 9-Leonard
Defense
6-Chychrun, 3-Roy
42-Fehervary, 73-Desharnais
44-Hutson, 27-Liljegren
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Injured/Out
38-Sandin (lower body)
34-Sourdif (illness)
80-Dubois (illness)
Healthy Extras
52-McIlrath
53-Frank
LOS ANGELES
Forwards
10-Panarin, 14-Laferriere, 9-Kempe
12-Moore, 55-Byfield, 36-Zuccarello
56-Haula, 21-Laughton, 40-Armia
47-Lee, 79-Helenius, 90-Perry
Defense
64-Gustafsson, 92-Clarke
6-Edmundson, 8-Doughty
44-Anderson, 2-Dumoulin
Goaltenders
35-Kuemper
31-Forsberg
Injured/out
15-Turcotte (undisclosed)
22-Fiala (lower body)
Healthy Extras
5-Ceci
17-Ward
