April 14 vs. Columbus Blue Jackets at Nationwide Arena
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT, ESPN
Radio: Team 980/Caps Radio Network
Washington Capitals (42-30-9)
Columbus Blue Jackets (40-29-12)
Coming off a smashing weekend in which they swept a set of home-and-home back-to-back games from the playoff-bound Pittsburgh Penguins, the Caps take to the road yet again on Monday. They head to Columbus where they will play their 2025-26 regular season finale against the Blue Jackets at Nationwide Arena.
As for what exactly the stakes of Tuesday’s game in Columbus will be, well, those will be determined tonight in Philadelphia where the Flyers host the Carolina Hurricanes. As of Monday morning, only one playoff berth remains to be claimed in the Eastern Conference, and Philadelphia currently occupies that slot.
Unlike Columbus and Washington, which have only their Tuesday head-to-head date remaining to be played this season, the Flyers have two games remaining. Philly is hosting a set of back-to-back games early in the week. After they take on the Hurricanes on Monday, the Flyers host the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday. The Flyers need to pick up just one point to eliminate Columbus and two points to administer the knockout punch to Washington.
So, while the Caps are heading to Columbus to finish off their regular season slate on Tuesday, they need Philly to lose Monday night’s match against Carolina, which is likely to rest a raft of regulars, as the Penguins did in both games against the Caps over the weekend. What the Caps do know is they will have their collective eyeballs glued to the television screens in Columbus on Monday night, and they hope the Hurricanes can defeat Philly, which would make their Tuesday night tilt with the Jackets a meaningful one.
“We’re just going to obviously scoreboard watch [Monday] and see what happens,” says Caps center Dylan Strome. “Nothing else we can do now, just go into Columbus and try to get two points. Hopefully, we get a good result [Monday] and that’s all we can focus on.”
With the sweep of the weekend set of back-to-backs, the Caps carry a three-game winning streak with them to Ohio’s capital city, and regardless of how things turn out on the out-of-town scoreboard on Monday night, the Caps will take aim at extending their winning streak to four when they go up against the Jackets. Washington has had a handful of three-game winning streaks in recent weeks and months, but it hasn’t won four in a row since it had a six-game winning streak stopped on Dec. 5 in Anaheim.
The main reason the Caps woke up Monday morning with a faint playoff heartbeat is the play of goaltender Logan Thompson, who blanked the Penguins by a 3-0 count on 24 shots in Sunday’s rematch. An afternoon earlier, Thompson faced a much lighter workload of just a dozen shots in a 6-3 win over the Pens in Pittsburgh, in a game in which many regulars – including Pens captain Sidney Crosby – sat out to get some extra rest ahead of the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs this weekend.
“We know obviously that they’re a great hockey team,” says Strome of the Penguins. “We’re fortunate that they didn’t play their full lineup both games, but you still have to go out there and battle and get those wins. Sometimes those are tougher to play because some guys are getting their opportunity and different guys are stepping up for them.
“They gave us a good effort [Sunday]; they controlled the game for a lot of the third period, but we held firm and [Thompson] was great, and guys were blocking shots and making plays. Obviously, a huge play by [Connor McMichael] and [Ryan Leonard] to put that game away there in the third.”
Trevor van Riemsdyk broke a scoreless stalemate midway through the middle period, staking the Caps to a 1-0 lead they carried into the third period. As the Penguins turned the heat up and pressured the Caps in their own end of the ice in search of an equalizer, Leonard set up McMichael for a critical insurance strike with 4:10 remaining. Two minutes later, a McMichael empty-net goal – with an assist from Alex Ovechkin – iced the game for the home team, and sealed Thompson’s fourth shutout of the season and his second in a span of three starts.
Beyond all the heroics on the ice, Sunday’s game was memorable as a day in which Washington fans lavished Ovechkin with love before, during and after the game. With the Caps’ captain’s contract expiring in June, and his future plans still undecided, the locals turned out in volume, and they turned up the volume inside the arena, imploring the NHL’s greatest goal scorer for “one more year!” and frequent chants of “Ovi, Ovi, Ovi!”
“What he has done for this city, you can’t put into words,” says Caps right wing Tom Wilson. “He’s literally changed the game, he’s changed the game of hockey, he’s changed everything in this city. What he’s done, it may not ever be done again for a franchise.
“He was so important to the League, so important to the game of hockey, and so important to the city. You see the stuff he did off the ice on the [video] segment the other night; that stuff is so important. I think there are hundreds of thousands of kids who play the game because of him and look up to him every day. He has worn all that and done it with class. And the amount of pressure he has been through, he just continues to exceed expectations and be a legend of the game.”
Sunday’s game was a wonderful tribute to Ovechkin. And given the must-win circumstances of the game, it could have ended badly for the Caps if they had gotten caught up in the emotions of the afternoon. But despite playing without defenseman Rasmus Sandin, who has been one of the team’s top performers in its late push for a postseason berth, the Caps shrugged it off and got the two points.
With Sandin on the sidelines, Timothy Liljegren – obtained from San Jose on March 6 – stepped in and seamlessly skated 21:16 while seeing his first game action in nearly a month, since a March 14 game against the Bruins in DC.
“I just think it speaks to our group,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery of his team’s clutch Sunday performance. “I knew even going back to the [trade] deadline when all the stuff happened with John [Carlson] and Nic [Dowd]. And as tough as that was, I know our guys and I know O, and I know Tom Wilson, and I know that there was just no way that we were going to throw the towel in, and just cruise in and hopefully play .500 hockey or just ride it out.
“It doesn’t mean that we were going to make the playoffs, but I knew that we would not pack it in and we were going to fight to win hockey games, any which way you look, even if we were not as good a team, even if we were maybe leaking oil a little bit and giving up more chances, which is factual. And this is an example of exactly that; our guys are not laying down. The playoff odds and all that, it is what it is. It’s a slim chance, but we were not going to give into those odds and the chance of us making it. We were going to continue to try to get two points every single night and leave everything we’ve got on the ice.”
Now, both the Caps and Columbus are hoping for a little bit of help on Monday night from Carolina. It’s up to the Hurricanes now to give meaning to Tuesday’s game between the Caps and the Jackets.
