Work To Do – Tonight, the Caps take to the ice for the first time in 20 nights, and they’ll be looking to pick up where they left off. After the NHL’s break of nearly three weeks to accommodate the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, the League is back in action with an eight-game slate of Wednesday night activity.
The Caps went into the break on the heels of a 4-2 home ice victory over the Nashville Predators here on Feb. 5, a win that allowed them to enter the break with a 5-2-1 record in their previous eight games. As they head into their final 23 games of the season, the Caps have some work to do. They’re four points south of the postseason cutline in the Eastern Conference, and they have the fewest games remaining of any of the League’s 32 member teams.
All three of Washington’s Olympic participants are back in town, and at least two of them will be playing tonight against Philadelphia. Defenseman Martin Fehervary returned over the weekend and practiced with the Caps on Tuesday. After winning silver medals while representing Team Canada, goaltender Logan Thompson and winger Tom Wilson returned Monday and they had Tuesday off.
“LT will start tonight,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery of Thompson. “Willie is a little under the weather, so he will be a game-time decision.”
Defenseman John Carlson suffered a lower body injury in the first period of that Feb. 5 game against Nashville and he will not be in the Washington lineup tonight.
As noted in this space yesterday, the 5-2-1 pace the Caps carried into the break (.6875 point pct.) is roughly the pace the Caps will need to maintain to get to 97 points in the standings, which may or may not be enough to get them into the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Carbery has clearly done the same math.
“I think just with the way the East has shaken out this year, and if you look at the amount of teams that are still there, so the teams that are on the outside looking in,” Carbery begins, “I’m going to forget everybody, but I’ll just use us and Columbus and there’s probably four other teams: Ottawa, Toronto, you could even put Florida and Philly – five games above .500 – [there].
“I just think with that many teams on the outside looking in and you’re five games above, some of those teams – whether it’s the wild card or the Metro – you’re going to have to get to 12, 13, 14 games above .500 probably, to get in. So, that puts you right around 97 or 98 points. Is it an exact number? No, but I think that’s somewhere in that ballpark.
“We won’t talk about it anymore; I don’t even hardly think about it. I just feel like that’s what we’re going to have to do, so we’ll start tonight.”
Tonight, the Caps and the Flyers and 14 other NHL teams will try to shake off a couple weeks’ worth of game inactivity as they return to the marathon that is the NHL regular season schedule.
“Everybody's going to be in the same boat,” says Carbery. “So, that's one of the things. It's a level playing field when it comes to your opponent has not played for the same amount of time you haven't. And as a coach, I'm just trying to trigger them, setting some practices up to get them up to game speed, and then just giving them little cues of, ‘Hey, here's some things are reminders of game speed.’
“Now, things are going to happen quickly out there. You're not going to have as much time and space to make decisions with the puck or make reads, so as quickly as we can get our guys back into game mode and make sure that all the little nuances inside of the game that are going to happen a lot quicker than they have over the week in practice, it’s just making sure that we're ready for that.”
On The Move – The Caps made a roster move on Wednesday afternoon, designating forward Sonny Milano as a non-roster player and placing him on waivers for the purpose of loaning him to AHL Hershey if he should clear by the 2 p.m. Thursday deadline.
The move was made in order to activate Connor McMichael from injured reserve.
Now in his 11th NHL season, Milano has logged 344 NHL games, including 147 in his four seasons with the Capitals. He had 11 goals and 33 points in 64 games with Washington in 2022-23, after signing with the team early in that season as an unrestricted free agent. In 2023-24, he totaled 15 goals and 23 points in just 49 games, but he was limited to just three games in 2024-25 because of an upper body injury.
Playing in 31 of Washington’s first 59 games this season, Milano totaled four goals and eight points while averaging 8:53 per night in ice time.
The 29-year-old native of Massapequa, NY is in the final season of a three-year deal that carries an annual salary cap hit of $1.9 million, a deal he signed just over three years ago, on Feb. 4, 2023.
Another NHL team claiming Milano would be responsible for the remainder of his salary for this season, which would be somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million dollars.
In The Nets – Upon returning from Italy where he represented Team Canada and helped it win a silver medal in the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Italy, Thompson gets the net tonight for Washington.
Thompson is seeking his 20th win of the season, and he is aiming to reach that plateau for the fourth consecutive season. Lifetime against the Flyers, he is 2-0-1 in three appearances – all starts – with a 2.99 GAA and a .905 save pct.
For the Flyers, Dan Vladar is expected to be between the pipes tonight. He made 26 saves to help Philadelphia to a 4-2 victory over the Caps on Feb. 3 in the City of Brotherly Love.
Lifetime against Washington, Vladar is 4-2-0 in six appearances – all starts – with a 3.32 GAA and an .881 save pct.
All Down The Line – Here’s how the Caps and the Flyers might look on Wednesday night in DC:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 21-Protas
24-McMichael, 80-Dubois, 43-Wilson
72-Beauvillier, 34-Sourdif, 9-Leonard
22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 53-Frank
Defensemen
42-Fehervary, 57-van Riemsdyk
6-Chychrun, 3-Roy
47-Chisholm, 38-Sandin
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Healthy Extras
29-Lapierre
52-McIlrath
Injured/Out
74-Carlson
PHILADELPHIA
Forwards
46-Zegras, 22-Dvorak, 11-Konecny
52-Barkey, 14-Couturier, 74-Tippett
39-Michkov, 27-Cates, 10-Brink
29-Grebenkin, 91-Grundstrom, 19-Hathaway
Defensemen
6-Sanheim, 55-Ristolainen
8-York, 9-Drysdale
24-Seeler, 47-Juulsen
Goalies
80-Vladar
33-Ersson
Healthy Extras
36-Andrae
44-Deslauriers
Injured/Out
18-Abols (ankle)
71-Foerster (arm)
