Right now, the 28 games that preceded this current 21-game stretch are still doing some heavy lifting on Washington’s overall position in NHL rankings. But the longer this spell drags on, the more it erodes the good work that came before it. A week into this current 21-game spell, the Caps still stood atop both the Eastern Conference and Metropolitan Division standings.
Washington woke up on Sunday morning outside the playoff cutline, sitting in 10th place in the East, three points shy of eighth-place Buffalo and two points behind ninth-place Toronto.
Washington has certainly had more injury woes than last season, but that’s true for most clubs in this season of the compressed schedule to accommodate NHL participation in the 2026 Winter Olympics. Given some of those metrics and numbers, is it somewhat surprising that the Caps are outside of the playoff picture with nearly 60 percent of the season in the books?
“I think it shows you what the main issue has been with this team all season,” says Caps GM Chris Patrick. “Injuries aside, it’s been special teams, both power play and PK, right? They’re both sitting in the bottom quartile in the League. You need to score power-play goals and you need to stop the other team’s power play in order to win games. The League is too tight at 5-on-5; you need to be scoring and preventing goals on special teams.
“Early in the season, we went on that run in mid-November to early December. And I think prior to that, we were playing really, really good hockey and we were losing close games because we were losing the special teams battle. And then we started getting some wins. I think [Caps coach Spencer Carbery] made the point the other day, we were playing the same, we were still playing well, but we were getting wins instead of losses, so it felt like everything was okay.
“And then now, we’re back to win one, lose one. And a lot of it you can look, and to me special teams is a lot of the times a deciding factor in the game. Even in the Montreal game the other night, we ended up pulling out an overtime win, and we had plenty of opportunity on the power play to try and do that earlier in the game. And not even score, but I think on both ends you can gain a lot of momentum from a big kill or just when the power play is buzzing and getting lots of chances.”
Washington is plus-37 (134-97) at even strength this season, but it is minus-18 (23-41) in all special teams scoring. If the Caps can manage even League-average special teams over the remainder of the season, it could go a long way toward improving their playoff hopes and fortunes.
Perhaps even more than special teams, the loss of center Pierre-Luc Dubois to an abdominal injury that required surgery has also stifled the Caps this season. In his first full season with the team in 2024-25, Dubois played all 82 games and was a strong candidate for team MVP. His presence in the middle of the ice allowed the rest of Washington’s pivots and forwards to fall into their most optimal spot in the lineup and allowed Carbery to deploy them in a more judicious and precise fashion.
The acquisition of Dubois last season raised all boats, and with him out of the lineup this season for all but six games, the Caps’ lineup has been spotty and inconsistent, not unlike their play on the ice. But they’ve also learned that youngsters like Ryan Leonard, Ethen Frank and Justin Sourdif are more than ready for prime-time roles in Washington.
“Losing a guy like Dubois and not causing us to go to the bottom of our division is a pretty good testament to our depth, right there,” says Patrick. “On any given night, you're seeing different guys rise to the occasion. A few nights ago against Montreal, it was Ethen Frank having a night. And a few games before that was the game when Sourdif had five points, and that was his night. I think you're seeing guys do it on a on a game-by-game basis, and then the hope is – and I know I've said this a lot – you get to a spot where you're a more healthy team, and then you can roll with your normal group, and it's more of a consistent effort night-to-night from everybody.”
Aside from a late season bump in special teams, what can the Caps do to improve their lot in the Eastern Conference standings?
“I’m definitely actively pursuing an addition,” says Patrick of the trade market. “Like I’ve seen written out there in the media – and I think it’s an accurate description – with as many teams in the mix right now playoff-wise as there are, I think teams are very much trying to figure out their timing, what they want to do and when they want to do it, and how aggressive they get, or do they stand pat.
“But for us, we view our biggest need as a higher end, skilled winger. And those aren’t always available at the deadline. It’s when they become available, they become available, and we’re going to continue pursuing those guys if they’re out there.”
Like Brian MacLellan, his predecessor in the GM’s chair, Patrick isn’t shy about discussing his team’s needs or its holes. And on the flipside of that coin, he notes the team’s intention to hold onto the many high-end prospects it has accumulated over the last few seasons. Two years ago at this time, the Caps executed a trade deadline coup when they “sold” players such as Joel Edmundson and Anthony Mantha while still making the playoffs and bringing in draft capital they then used to select players in the draft or to acquire established talent from around the League.
That reset of the team’s prospect cupboard lifted Washington from near the bottom to the upper half of the circuit in terms of the quality and quantity of players now in its system.
“If we can get a team to move off the top of our prospect list, then maybe there is something to be done,” says Patrick. “But we’re not going to trade away some of our top guys that we think are going to be part of the team for the next 10 years for something that we don’t think is going to have the impact that we need it to have. We’re actually looking at whatever’s out there and hoping we can find something before the deadline.”
The trade deadline is March 6 this season, and that’s the better part of two months from now. But given the League-wide moratorium on trades during the Olympic break next month, most teams only have another 14-16 games to be played between now and the deadline, so clubs are actively trying to get things done now. Given the tightness and the parity in the standings, many teams are still straddling the fence and trying to determine whether the best course of action for them this season is to fish or to cut bait.
“To me, it’s more standings-based,” says Patrick. “If there is some clarity for teams in the next 10-14 days, then maybe they’ll say, ‘Hey, we’re going to start it now, try to get ahead of it and strike while there’s a lot of buyers still.’ But if it continues to be kind of how it is right now, I don’t know if teams are going to wait and then start to use the Olympic break to start to make some calls and try to get some things going for right after the break.”
Despite this season’s Caps resembling the ’23-24 edition more than last season’s model – at least to this point of the season – there have been some positives from the first half.
“It was refreshing to see some guys step up in Pierre-Luc [Dubois’] absence,” says Patrick. “Some guys really elevated their games. Justin Sourdif showed that he can play at a higher level, which was huge. And then we had a second layer of injuries after that, where Aliaksei [Protas], Tom [Wilson], Justin and Jakob [Chychrun] were out for a little bit. These are guys that were playing heavy minutes for us, and we had other guys step up as well and try to fill those roles. But it’s just hard when you’re missing that much out of your group, and I think we’ve done a good job to keep ourselves in the mix here. And we hope that we can get healthy and stay healthy, that we can push and get into a fairly solid playoff position.”
The strong showings of both Sourdif and Frank have not only helped the Caps hang tight in the Eastern Conference standings, they’ve impacted how the team views those two players and their roles within the depth chart beyond this season.
“Yeah, for sure,” says Patrick. “And I think it even helps when you’re thinking past this year, and what your center ice group might look like now that you have Sourdif, and how you might deploy those center ice men for matchup purposes. And that goes hand-in-hand with the types of wingers playing with those players, both in terms of what we have and in what we should be going after.
“I think it has really helped give us a clearer vision of what our team might look like once we’re all healthy, at the end of this year and going forward into next year and the areas that we should be looking to add, which is again, that high-end winger.”
There is also the matter of the Caps’ two senior most players, captain Alex Ovechkin and defenseman John Carlson. Both are unrestricted free agents on July 1, but the 40-year-old Ovechkin and the 36-year-old Carlson are both still productive NHL players.
Have the Caps discussed Ovechkins’ future plans with him?
“No, not really,” says Patrick. “We've had some discussions on just the direction of the team and what we see as needs for the team – both he and I – and it hasn't really gotten into any discussion of his plans outside of right now, and this year.”
Patrick says the Caps would consider signing Carlson to an extension.
“We’ve had some discussions for sure,” he says, “and we’ll continue to talk.”
Those talks can wait until after the season. The trade talk figures to be high between now and that March 6 deadline, which, for the Capitals, is a mere 15 games away.
“I think we're looking for the higher end guys,” Patrick reiterates. “That doesn't necessarily line up with [the market]; it’s kind of when a guy like that becomes available, you try to jump in there. So I don't know if it lines up with a pre-Olympic deadline or the trade deadline in general, or if it’s something in the offseason. I think for our team, with where we are, I want to see where we are close to the trade deadline when it comes to maybe adding other pieces for a typical kind of playoff push type add. So I don't see us doing anything immediately before the Olympic break.
“But obviously, a lot of teams are talking, and I think across the League – everybody's talking about it, it has been a big storyline – there's so much parity, and the standings are so tight. And I think because of that, you’ve got a lot of teams similar to us, they're kind of trying to see where they're going to be, what kind of adds or deletions they want to make for their team and for the playoffs. And because of that, I don't know if you'll see a ton of stuff happen before the Olympic break.”
