Your Team Is Looking Good – When the Caps take the ice tonight for the third of their four preseason contests, it will be the only game of the quartet to feature virtually the team’s entire expected opening night lineup. Only Caps captain Alex Ovechkin will be missing from when Washington drops the puck against Boston tonight at Capital One Arena; Ovechkin was a participant in the Caps’ Friday morning skate, but he will not suit up tonight, nor will he do so in the exhibition finale in Philly on Saturday.
Aside from defenseman Rasmus Sandin, who is currently rehabbing from offseason knee surgery, Ovechkin will be the only regular missing from the lineup tonight.
And with Ovechkin, the Caps are merely being cautious.
“He is not going to play tonight,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “We’re just going to be cautious with it, so he is not playing tonight or tomorrow.”
Ethen Frank will step into Ovechkin’s spot in the lineup, and Ryan Leonard will slide from the right side to the left, and the two wingers will skate alongside Dylan Strome in the middle in the only Washington forward line comprised entirely of holdovers from the 2025-26 edition of the Capitals.
Each of the other three lines features an offseason acquisition, as the regulars – Ovechkin notwithstanding – all reach their two-game preseason max limits with tonight’s game. The Caps will need to suit up a youthful lineup for Saturday’s finale in Philly.
Tonight, Carbery will have a watchful eye on the chemistry of his lines and blueline pairings, and he’ll also be looking at how his newly crafted special teams outfits look against a representative Boston lineup. The Bruins are concluding their four-game preseason slate tonight.
When the Caps and Bruins met in Boston on Sunday to kick off the preseason, whistles were plentiful and 5-on-5 time was hard to come by. Tonight, Carbery is hoping the game has just enough special teams to get a handle on how those units are coming along. He is seeking to see more 5-on-5 time than we witnessed in Sunday’s opener.
“What would be the ideal amount of power plays and penalty kills?” muses Carbery. “I’m going to say – because you want some 5-on-5 – I’m going to say four apiece would be a nice, healthy amount. You get some good work on your power play and penalty kill, and it isn’t an overabundance to where you hardly get any 5-on-5.
“I think our coaches, special teams coaches, and myself would be happy with that, if there is four apiece.”
That number would also result in a reasonable amount of 5-on-5 time with which to assess and evaluate the team’s 18 skaters for tonight’s contest.
Chemistry Class – With a significantly shortened preseason schedule and a two-game max imposed on veteran participation, training camp practices and drills and off-ice bonding and communication become important elements in the development of chemistry between newly built forward lines and blueline pairings, and we will see how that is coming along tonight.
Washington’s fourth line of Boone Jenner, Justin Sourdif and Anthony Beauvillier is an interesting trio of Swiss Knives. All three are capable of playing multiple forward positions and all three are capable of playing higher in the lineup, making them versatile both vertically and horizontally on the team’s depth chart.
“The most important thing is just going to be to read off each other,” says Beauvillier. “We can all play anywhere, and it’s going to be up to us to read off each other and go from there. Either Sourdie is first back in the zone and fills that position, or if Boone is, then we read from there. And in the offensive zone, I think these two guys are smart and can make plays offensively and can score goals. I think we’re going to have to take care of our own end first, and then go play offense.”
In Sunday’s preseason opener in Boston, Beauvillier skated 16:34, but just 10:07 at even strength. He also logged multiple minutes on both special teams. Jenner skated 18:56, with just over half (9:47) of that time coming at evens. He also toiled more than four minutes on both special teams. And Sourdif skated 22:34 on Sunday against the B’s, second only to Tom Wilson (23:1) among all Washington forwards. Sourdif’s first preseason game also included 3:14 on the power play and 5:33 – tops among the team’s forwards – in shorthanded ice time.
During his rookie NHL season in 2025-26, Sourdif averaged 14:44 per game. That includes 1:01 per contest on the power play and just eight seconds worth of nightly penalty killing time, but Sourdif has plenty of penalty killing experience from his three-season apprenticeship with AHL Charlotte.
As a rookie last season, Sourdif exceeded the 20-minute mark once in 78 games, logging a single-game career high 20:51 on Jan. 3 vs. Chicago. He’s excited about his new linemates and ready to roll into the regular season.
“I love them,” says Sourdif of his wingers. “Yeah, Boone and Beau, man, they fly out there. They’re so smart, so competitive, and I can already feel the chemistry coming together. We’re super excited. Over the next couple of days, we’ll probably just talk about just stuff we want to do as a line and what our goal is. We’re all super excited to get things going and just keep building that chemistry every day.”
“It’s going to be interesting,” says Beauvilier. “We’ve put in a lot of new players – a lot of really good players – and I think for camp it was all about finding chemistry all together as a line, as a team, and I think it was a challenge for everybody. A lot of guys are playing with new linemates, and it’s been a fun camp. The pace has been high, and we’ve got a lot of talent on our team.”
In The Nets – Logan Thompson started the Caps’ preseason opener against the Bruins in Boston this past Sunday, and he gets the net again tonight against the B’s. Clay Stevenson will serve as his backup in tonight’s game; Stevenson played the back half of Washington’s second preseason game on Monday night against the Flyers in Hershey.
Thompson was in midseason form in the exhibition opener last weekend; he stopped 28 of 30 shots in a 3-2 shootout setback. The first Boston goal came with one second remaining on a B’s power play and the second was a 6-on-5 strike in the game’s penultimate minute of regulation with the Boston netminder pulled for an extra attacker.
For Boston, we’re expecting to see Jeremy Swayman in net tonight. Like Thompson, he went the distance in his first exhibition start, stopping 20 of 21 shots in a 5-1 win over the Flyers on Tuesday night in Boston.
All Down The Line – Here’s how we expect the Caps to line up for tonight’s preseason match with Boston, and here also is a roster of Bruins expected to suit up on Friday night in the District:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
89-Tuch, 80-Dubois, 43-Wilson
9-Leonard, 17-Strome, 53-Frank
21-A. Protas, 62-I. Protas, 25-Kyrou
22-Jenner, 34-Sourdif, 72-Beauvillier
Defense
6-Chychrun, 3-Roy
44-Hutson, 73-Desharnais
42-Fehervary, 27-Liljegren
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
33-Stevenson
BOSTON
Forwards
10-Peterka
11-Mittelstadt
18-Zacha
28-E. Lindholm
39-Geekie
44-Hagens
47-Kastelic
56-Locmelis
84-Jeannot
88-Pastrnak
92-Khusnutdinov
93-Minten
Defense
6-Lohrei
17-Borgen
28-H. Lindholm
45-Aspirot
75-Clifton
91-Zadorov
Goaltenders
1-Swayman
30-DiPietro
