Let The Four Winds Blow – The Caps are in Newark tonight, taking on the Devils in the first of Washington’s seven games in the month of April, and seeking to extend their modest winning streak to four games. Since their season-high six-game winning streak was snapped in Anaheim on Dec. 5, the Caps have had three winning streaks of three games in length, and none that is any longer than that.
All three victories have come in high-scoring, high-event games, but the result is all that matters to Washington at this stage of the season. Get the two points, and don’t worry about how.
Like many of Washington’s recent opponents, the Devils have played well since the return from the Olympic break. New Jersey enters tonight’s game with 10 wins in its last 15 games (10-5-0) and with the seventh best 5-on-5 shot attempt metrics since the Olympic pause ended on Feb. 25.
Tonight, the Caps will be seeking their fifth victory in the last month against a top 10 possession team coming out of the break. The Caps have recently defeated Vegas (third in SAT pct. since the break), Buffalo (fifth), Ottawa (sixth) and Utah (ninth).
Offense From The Defense – In last Thursday’s game against the Mammoth in Utah, five of the six Washington defensemen picked up a point, and blueliners factored into each of the Capitals’ first six goals of the game, a 7-4 Washington victory. Rasmus Sandin had a goal and an assist in the game; he was the only Washington defenseman with multiple points that night.
Less than a week later, back home in the District, Jakob Chychrun fueled a six-point night from the blueline in a 6-4 win over the Flyers. Blueliners were involved in the scoring of all six goals with Chychrun supplying a power-play goal and a pair of helpers.
Chychrun has racked up single-season career bests in goals (24), assists (32) points (56) and average ice time (23:33 per game). He leads all NHL defensemen in goals.
Sandin is two points shy of his third 30-point season in the NHL, Martin Fehervary has reached the 20-oint plateau for the second straight season, and Matt Roy is a point shy of a fifth straight 20-point campaign. Finally, 19-year-old Cole Hutson has contributed five points in his first seven NHL games.
Even after trading franchise stalwart John Carlson – and in the midst of one of the veterans best offensive seasons – the Caps have kept the points coming from the back end.
With 195 points (49 goals, 146 assists) through the first 75 games of the 2025-26 season, Washington’s blueline corps is – for the second time in as many seasons – on pace for its best season of offensive contributions in more than three decades. Last season’s defense contributed 200 points (38 goals, 162 points) on the nose, which was the first Washington team to reach 200 points from the back end since the 1993-94 edition rolled up 215 points (62 goals, 153 assists).
At their current pace, this year’s model would fall just shy of that ’93-94 team in raw numbers; they are on track to finish with 213 points. But this year’s NHL schedule is an 82-game slate, and that’s two games fewer than the Original 26 played back in 1993-94, the second and final season in which the League played 84 games. The League is returning to an 84-game schedule for next season.
The ’25-26 Caps blueline is accruing points at a rate of 2.6 per contest, a shade better than the rate rolled up by Kevin Hatcher and the rest of the ’93-94 gang. This season’s Caps – and any future iteration, for that matter – will have an uphill trek to reach the franchise mark for most points in a season by defensemen. That figure is 264 points, established in 1992-93, when Washington defensemen averaged more than three points per game (3.14) during another 84-game campaign.
When you recall that the 2023-24 Capitals had just 135 points (20 goals, 115 assists) from the back end to finish 30th in the League in blueline scoring, the numbers of the last two seasons are even more impressive.
Senses Working Overtime – Coming out of the Olympic break in late February, the Capitals had 23 games remaining in their season, and they were four points shy of a playoff berth. As they take the ice in Newark on Thursday for the first of their seven April games, the Caps find themselves three points out of a playoff spot with seven games remaining.
When the Caps snuck into the playoffs in the waning minutes of their final regular season game of the campaign in 2023-24, they did so with just 91 points. The Metro Division was more mediocre in those days, but there also were also far fewer three-point games with gratuitous loser points scattered about the League.
Until the League came up with the idea to reward teams for delaying losses until beyond the game’s 60th minute some years ago, there was a fixed number of points available for every NHL season, and teams had a decent idea of how many points they might need to reach the postseason.
But in the modern NHL, that number now changes from season to season, and it has increased significantly in 2025-26.
As one would expect, in the years when both ties and overtime losses were still a possibility (from 1999-00 through 2003-04), the rate of three-points games held steady in the 10-12 percent range, meaning 10 to 12 percent of all games were three-point contests.
Coming out of the lockout that wiped out the entire 2004-05 season, the NHL instituted the shootout and did away with ties, leading to a virtual doubling of three-point games to 23.66 percent that first season.
Since 2005-06, the percentage of three-point games has stayed above 20 percent every year, dipping to its lowest levels in each of the last two seasons when 271 of the 1,312 NHL games (20.66 percent) were three-point games in 2023-24 and again in 2025-26.
With two weeks remaining in the 2025-26 season, we’ve already had 306 three-point games, far more than the last two seasons and – for the first time ever – the percentage rate has crept above 25 percent; it’s at 25.71 percent heading into tonight’s slate of NHL activity.
This season’s total of 306 three-point games matches the all-time high set in 2014-15 when there were 30 teams in the League and 1,230 NHL games scattered across a full League season. This season, the NHL has combined for the same number of three-point games while playing 40 fewer games – to this point – than were played in the entire ’14-15 season.
As of now, the 24.88 percent rate of three-point games in 2014-15 is still the all-time record, but with another two weeks – and 122 games remaining to be played – it’s a good bet we’ll see that mark shattered this season.
In The Nets – Logan Thompson starts for the ninth straight game – extending a career high run – and for the 16th time in 18 games and the 15th time in 17 games since the Olympic break. And tonight, Thompson appears in his 200th career NHL game. He enters tonight’s contest with 11 4 career victories, which is seventh-most among active goaltenders at the time of their 200th career games.
Since Feb. 5, Thompson is 9-4-2 with a 2.46 GAA and a .912 save pct. His consistent netminding has kept the Caps in the race even as the offense support he has received has vacillated across that span.
“I think he's done an exceptional job all year long,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery of Thompson. “He started the year as our sort of 1A [goaltender]; got opportunity to run with the starter’s job, and was tremendous out of the gate, arguably the best goaltender in the league for the first portion of the season.
“Chucky [Lindgren] got into some more action in that middle portion before the Olympic break, and then coming out of it with the circumstances, it's not ideal; I'll be honest with you. You would like to have Charlie playing a little bit more than he is, but because of our circumstances as a team – we've felt like it's been do or die for quite some time now – and Logan's earned that opportunity to play in these big games for our team, and he's done a done a great job.”
That he has. According to sportlogiq, Thompson ranks second in the NHL in cumulative goals saved above expected (44.1). He is tied with Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy for most starts with one or fewer goals allowed (16), and his six games with 35 or more saves is tied for second in the NHL.
The 29-year-old Thompson has gone from an undrafted goaltender to one of the best in the business, and he represented Team Canada at the 2026 Winter Olympic Games.
“That was a special group we had over in Milan, and a lot of special players, and a lot of future Hall of Famers,” he says. “So it was nice to kind of sit there, and I wasn't necessarily playing every game, but it was nice to sit there and see how they act, how they prepare for games, and even their mental side. And obviously, things didn't go our way there, but just how professional everyone acted, and again just soaking in the whole experience. And I was able to learn a lot from a lot of those guys. It was just, overall, a really positive experience for me, individually and just taking stuff that I learned from some of those elite players and just taking it back here to DC.”
Thompson’s record with Washington is 58-26-12 in two seasons, for a .604 winning pct, just a tick ahead of Braden Holtby’s club mark (100 games or more) of .603. Holtby was 282-122-46 with the Caps.
Lifetime against the Devils, Thompson is 4-0-3 in seven appearances – all starts – with a 2.87 GAA and a .907 save pct.
For New Jersey, we are expecting to see Jake Allen, who started in Washington for the Devils when the two teams met most recently, on March 20. If it is Allen, it would be just his fifth start in the Devils’ last 17 games, as Jacob Markstrom has seen most of the action over that span.
Lifetime against the Capitals, Allen is 6-7-1 with a shutout in 14 appearances – all starts – with a 3.43 GAA and an .892 save pct.
All Down The Line – Here’s how the Caps and the Devils might look on Thursday night in Newark:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 24-McMichael
29-Lapierre, 80-Dubois, 43-Wilson
72-Beauvillier, 34-Sourdif, 9-Leonard
22-Duhaime, 64-Kampf, 63-Miroshnichenko
Defensemen
42-Fehervary, 38-Sandin
6-Chychrun, 57-van Riemsdyk
44-Hutson, 3-Roy
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Healthy Extras
27-Liljegren
47-Chisholm
52-McIlrath
53-Frank
Injured/Out
21-Protas (upper body)
NEW JERSEY
Forwards
28-Meier, 13-Hischier, 91-Mercer
63-Bratt, 86-J. Hughes, 16-Brown
29-Hameenaho 12-Glass, 72-Bjugstad
33-Dadonov, 47-Cotter, 42-Tsyplakov
Defensemen
71-Siegenthaler, 7-Hamilton
43-L. Hughes, 8-Kovacevic
5-Dillon, 17-Nemec
Goalies
34-Allen
25-Markstrom
Healthy Extras
44-Cholowski
Injured/Out
11-Noesen (lower body)
15-MacEwen (lower body)
22-Pesce (lower body)
81-Gritsyuk (undisclosed)
