The Oil Rigs At Night – Edmonton is in town for its lone visit of the season tonight, and for the Washington, Wednesday’s game against the Oilers is also the front end of a set of back-to-backs; the Caps will be in the air and on their way to Montreal at day’s end. They’ve got a Thursday night date with a rested Habs team at Bell Centre.
Wednesday night’s game is also a big opportunity for the Capitals. Since starting the season 6-2-0 in their first eight games, the Caps have won only three of 11 (3-6-2) since, and they’ve been unable to stack wins together in nearly four weeks now. But after earning a 2-1 win over Los Angeles on Monday night, the opportunity knocks for the Caps tonight.
They are aiming to be headed to Montreal with their first set of consecutive wins since Oct. 21-24.
All Things Change – Last season, the Caps were a consistently solid offensive team. They finished the season with an average of 3.49 goals per game, second in the League. Health was a big part of that equation; Washington’s top 18 skaters were in the lineup far more often than not; seven players played all 82 games and a dozen skated in at least 79 contests.
This season has been different. The Caps have been without their top two centers at times; Dylan Strome missed two games with an injury and P-L Dubois played in just six games before being sidelined with a long-term upper body injury that is expected to keep him out of action until February or so.
As a result of those injuries and some other factors, the Caps have managed just 2.79 goals per game through their first 19 games, a rate that ranks 24th in the NHL. While health and success allowed the Caps to keep line combinations more consistently intact last season, a lack of scoring combined with more of a revolving door lineup has led to some lineup alterations and experiments in the early going this season.
Caps coach Spencer Carbery is typically one of the more patient coaches when it comes to shaking up lines, and even though Washington’s results haven’t been as consistently solid this season, he has still shown plenty of patience, given the team’s solid underlying numbers. But at some point, the moral victory of solid underlying numbers takes a back seat to the need for standings points. And some recent line alterations have allowed the Caps to earn points in consecutive games (1-0-1) to start this homestand.
“If you look at last year, it was pretty consistent – for the most part – with lines,” says Strome. “And we got very lucky; we didn’t have many injuries last year. And when a huge part of your team goes down, you’re trying to find the balance of how the three or four other lines can work. One player can affect that many lines.
“In the last couple of games, I think we’ve found something where we’re controlling play a lot and we’re getting great chances to score.”
Nic Dowd’s line with Brandon Duhaime and Ethen Frank had been one of the team’s most reliable units during its recent road trip, but even that line was altered with a flip of middlemen – to good effect for both units – in Monday’s game.
“It’s hard to talk about how important it is, but when you’ve won one of your last seven – or whatever it was – it’s not going to hurt,” says Dowd. “What are we going to do? We have to do something different. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is not going to help in a long season. So regardless of what the switch is, you’ve got to try some new things, see if you can shake a few things up.”
Throughout this season, even when the goals weren’t as bountiful as they’ve been lately for Alex Ovechkin (four goals in his last seven games), the combination of he and Strome was producing offense. Strome ranks among the top dozen players in the NHL in goal differential at 5-on-5, and Ovechkin is in the League’s top 40 in that regard.
“I think it’s a product of good goaltending when we're on the ice,” says Strome, “and a product of us trying to control play as much as we can and not giving up a ton. When we're playing in these tight games, it's almost like you want to be bit more conscious of not cheating for offense, because it feels like at certain times of this season already, if we give up two or three, we're having a tough time scoring two or three, so you’ve got to be just a little bit more aware. But I think we're doing the right things. And I think as soon as the power play starts kicking, it will be a whole new ball game for us.”
Given the length of the season, things can get a bit stale playing with the same linemates night after night. But sometimes, coaching staffs need to make alterations for other reasons. Some coaches like to tinker, whether it’s during practice or in game, and other times, necessity can be the mother of invention.
“The whole point is you’re trying to find new combinations you haven’t seen before that can make your team more successful,” says Dowd. “Whether or not that makes the individual successful which then makes the team successful, those are kind of one and the same. If we can switch some players up and play some players in different situations, and put guys together that haven’t necessarily been together, you might unlock something you didn’t know you had.
“That’s probably the key. If we’re doing the same thing and not having success, it might be worth taking a chance and seeing if we can find success with something else, whether that’s special teams, 5-on-5 or how you deploy people.”
Throughout the Caps struggles in recent weeks, Carbery has been adamant that the process is not going to change. That’s typical for most NHL teams, but we have seen the Caps change horses in midstream before, during both the Ron Wilson and the Bruce Boudreau bench boss eras. Those were different times, and those system shifts were made for different reasons. These changes came about primarily because of the gaping absence of Dubois from the Washington lineup, and then from a lack of results over a period of a few weeks.
Carbery and his staff are as driven and as hands-on when it comes to problem solving as any, and altering the look of the lines is the primary tool available to them in that area.
“That our job,” says Carbery. “And when you talk about process and whatever our record and is and anything, that's what we do every single day, and what our staff has done the last three years and will continue to do.
“We come in, and it's our job as coaches to dissect what happened. What did we do well? What areas can we get better in? And then, how can we help the team improve? And what does our day look like in doing so? Part of that is digging in to find out, what are the best line combinations that give us the best opportunity to win? Who can we work with in player development today, in individual video, or on the ice with [assistant skills coach] Kenny [McCudden?] Who goes out there? What do they need to work on? All of that stuff is covered every day, and that's a process that – whether you win or lose – I think shouldn't change, and that's how we approach it.”
Raw Power – Connor McDavid made his NHL debut with the Oilers in 2015-16, a year after Leon Draisaitl did so. But Draisaitl’s first full NHL season was also ’15-16; he did get into 37 games the previous season.
Starting with that 2015-16 campaign and going through action of Tuesday night in the NHL, the Oilers own a 24.5 percent power play success rate, the best in the League over that span. However, Edmonton’s power play prowess over the last decade has translated to a .575 point percentage for the team across that span, which is tied for 15th in the circuit.
Looking at 5-on-5 play over that span, each of the top 10 teams in the NHL in point percentage has a 5-on-5 goal differential of at least plus-99; and the three teams with the best point pct. – Boston and Tampa Bay at .642 and Washington at .635 – also have the best three 5-on-5 goal differentials over that span. Tampa Bay is plus-252, Boston is plus-248 and Washington is plus-220.
The Oilers are underwater, but barely, at minus-14.
Given that far fewer minutes of a hockey game are played on special teams than at 5-on-5, this is hardly shocking news, but the correlation between strong 5-on-5 play and positive game results is higher than that of extra-man unit success and positive game results.
The 2025-26 Oilers are illustrating this concept yet again. Edmonton’s power play is clicking at a 30.8 percent rate, third best in the League. But with a minus-16 goal differential at 5-on-5 in 21 games this season, the Oilers rank next-to-last in the NHL, ahead of only Nashville (minus-17). Among the 15 NHL teams that have surrendered 40 or more goals at 5-on-5 to this point, only two – Columbus at plus-3 and Utah at plus-2 – have been able to score enough at 5-on-5 to keep their heads above the proverbial water. (Montreal is even.)
Taken as a whole, the McDavid/Draisaitl era of Oilers hockey has been offensively electrifying and defensively disappointing. But the Caps know they’ll need to limit Edmonton’s looks on the man advantage if they’re going to win here tonight.
Since the start of the 2015-16 season, Edmonton sniper Leon Draisaitl is the NHL’s leading power-play goal scorer with 167, and that’s 17 more than second-place Alex Ovechkin over the same span.
“The interesting thing that I find about [Draisatl’s one-timer] – a little bit different from [Ovechkin’s]; O’s was always that [left] dot, or top of the circles – is Leon gets low. He can almost shoot that thing from the goal line, which is amazing, the shot angle that you get when you start to get down that far. You’ll find him a couple of feet off the goal line, shooting one-timers in the back of the net, which is really impressive.”
In just 21 games this season, the lethal Edmonton extra-man duo has already combined for 23 power-play goals; McDavid has a dozen and Draisaitl has 11. Fortunately for the rest of the league, the Oilers are drawing 2.9 power plays per 60; they rank 30th in the NHL in that department.
For the Caps, tonight is about showing off their 5-on-5 prowess rather than witnessing Edmonton’s expertise with the extra man.
“Being real disciplined tonight will be at the forefront of us having success and making sure that we keep them off the power play,” says Carbery. “And we’re good with our sticks and we don’t take any careless minors, and just play them straight up 5-on-5 as much as we possibly can.”
In The Nets – Logan Thompson is tonight’s starter for Washington. He had Monday night off as Charlie Lindgren helped the Caps earn their 2-1 victory over LA in the middle match of the homestand with a strong 30-save performance.
Among all goaltenders with at least 10 games played this season, Thompson’s 1.85 GAA and his .925 save pct. are both tops in the League. He has yielded two or fewer goals against in 11 of his 13 starts this season.
Lifetime against the Oilers, Thompson is 1-2-1 in four appearances – all starts – with a 3.45 GAA and an .899 save pct.
For the Oilers, Stuart Skinner gets the start tonight. He has started 15 of the Oilers’ first 21 games this season, forging a 7-5-3 record with a shutout, a 2.86 GAA and an .889 save pct.; he ranks 20th in the NHL in GAA and 26th in save pct.
Lifetime against the Capitals, Skinner is 2-3-0 with a shutout, a 2.64 GAA and a .910 save pct. in five appearances, all starts.
All Down The Line – Here’s how the Capitals and the Oilers might look on Wednesday night in DC:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
24-McMichael, 17-Strome, 8-Ovechkin
21-Protas, 34-Sourdif, 43-Wilson
72-Beauvillier, 26-Dowd, 9-Leonard
22-Duhaime, 29-Lapierre, 53-Frank
Defensemen
42-Fehervary, 74-Carlson
6-Chychrun, 3-Roy
38-Sandin, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Healthy Extras
15-Milano
47-Chisholm
52-McIlrath
Injured/Out
80-Dubois (upper body)
EDMONTON
Forwards
22-Savoie, 97-McDavid, 28-Roslovic
92-Podkolzin, 29-Draisaitl, 88-Mangiapane
10-Frederic, 19-Henrique, 18-Hyman
13-Janmark, 86-Tomasek
Defensemen
25-Nurse, 2-Bouchard
14-Ekholm, 27-Kulak
96-Walman, 75-Regula
49-Emberson
Goalies
74-Skinner
30-Pickard
Healthy Extras
53-Howard
Injured/Out
20-Lazar (upper body)
48-Philp (upper body)
42-Kapanen (lower body)
93-Nugent-Hopkins (undisclosed)
