With the regular season now fully in the rear view, the Stanley Cup playoffs are upon us. Two Western Conference series get underway today, and Sunday brings three more first-round series-opening delights to the table. The Caps are part of Monday night’s third course; they’ll host the Montreal Canadiens in Game 1 of the first-round Stanley Cup playoff series between the two long ago Norris Division co-tenants.
Friday was a scheduled day off for the Capitals, who reconvened with purpose on Saturday morning at Capital One Arena, where subterranean alterations are underway and ongoing. Following a two-part practice – sandwiched around an ice resurfacing – they gathered for a team meal and a meeting concerning their now singular focus, the Canadiens.
“We had a great season, obviously the playoffs is a different animal,” says Caps right wing Tom Wilson. “But we’ll do some video, and we’ll get ready for them. I think if we play our game – a hard, physical, playoff brand of hockey, the stuff that’s made us successful all year – we should have a pretty good chance.”
Washington was without defenseman Martin Fehervary at Saturday’s session, and forward Aliaksei Protas remains sidelined on a week-to-week basis. There was some good news on the list of ailing; goaltender Logan Thompson returned to the full practice environment on Saturday, and defenseman Matt Roy also returned to the ice.
Thompson has been out of game action since departing an April 2 game in Raleigh with an upper body injury after the first period, but he has been on the ice for each of the team’s last two morning skates and an optional practice Wednesday in Pittsburgh.
Roy missed Thursday’s season finale in Pittsburgh, but he logged a team high and single-game season high 25:52 in ice time in Washington’s road win over the Islanders on Tuesday.
“I’ll just preface injuries with this,” begins Caps coach Spencer Carbery, “we’ve got guys working through some things, some guys skating, [or] not skating. And for me to go into, ‘This guy is 80 percent, this guy has a chance to play, this guy doesn’t,’ I’m just going to leave it as we’ve got a bunch of guys working through some things, progressing, potentially playing on Monday, potentially not.
“And once we get going in the series, I can give you more updates as guys are obviously warming up and in the lineup, or not.”
Regardless of who is playing on Monday, the Caps will concentrate on contending with the upstart Canadiens, who ramped up from 76 points last season to 91 in 2024-25, landing the last playoff berth in the Eastern Conference in their last game of the season. The Caps achieved a similar ascent last season when they climbed from 80 to 91 points, and they squeezed into the final playoff berth in their final game of the season.
Montreal’s top line of Cole Caufield, Nick Suzuki and Juraj Slafkovsky is one of the most potent units in the League; it combined for 85 goals during the regular season. And the combination of Caufield and Patrik Laine gives the Montreal power play a lethal weapon from each side of the ice.
The Caps boast seven players with 20 or more goals this season, but the Habs run deep as well; they’ve got four 20-goal scorers and a dozen that reached double digits. And the Canadiens also feature electrifying rookie defenseman Lane Hutson, the odds-on favorite for this year’s Calder Trophy.
Hutson, the older brother of Caps blueline prospect Cole Hutson, piled up 66 points this season, tied with Tampa Bay’s Victor Hedman for sixth among League defenders. Hutson’s 60 assists tie an NHL rookie record for defensemen set by Hockey Hall of Famer – and longtime Capital – Larry Murphy, who had 60 helpers as a 19-year-old freshman with Los Angeles in 1980-81.
“The specifics of their team, [they’re] very deep,” says Carbery. “I find that their forward group, especially with now the addition of [winger Ivan] Demidov, it gives them a little bit of a new look, if [Habs coach] Marty [St. Louis] deploys Demidov and Laine and [Alex] Newhook as an offensive line that he can give a bunch of [offensive] zone starts to, or put on the fly.
“And then he’s got – similar to us with the Dowd line – he has the [Christian] Dvorak line [with Brendan Gallagher and Josh Anderson]. It’s a line that can change momentum, that’s physical, that’s going to go out and be real reliable.”
Prior to Saturday’s session, the Caps announced the recall of defenseman Ethan Bear from AHL Hershey where – with two regular season games remaining for the Bears – he is the team’s leading scorer with 46 points (10 goals, 36 assists) in 62 games.
Earlier in the week, Bear was named to the AHL’s Second All-Star Team, as voted by AHL coaches, players, and media from each of the League’s 32 cities. Also named to that same Second All-Star Team was Charlotte Checkers forward John Leonard, brother of Washington winger Ryan Leonard.
Bear joined Dylan McIlrath on the right side of the team’s fourth pairing at Saturday’s downtown session, with Fehervary absent, Alex Alexeyev took his place in the top six, skating the left side of a pairing with Trevor van Riemsdyk. Roy skated with lefty Rasmus Sandin, and Jakob Chychrun and John Carlson were paired together, giving Washington three pairs with some familiarity together.
With just under 400 minutes together at 5-on-5 this season (according to naturalstattrick.com), the Sandin-Roy tandem is the fourth most frequently deployed Washington defense duo. And the Chychrun-Carlson pair is fifth on that list at 387:27, only about five minutes south of Sandin-Roy.
And while Alexeyev has been used sparingly because of the remarkable health and consistency of the Caps’ top six throughout a significant swath of the regular season, he and TVR have spent 70 minutes playing at 5-on-5 together this season in just eight games, with positive analytics.
Additionally, when Alexeyev played in a career-high 39 games last season, he and TVR played together at some point in 34 of those contests. Alexeyev and van Riemsdyk played just under 200 minutes together during the 2023-24 season.
Up front on Saturday, the Caps lined up as they have recently, with Alex Ovechkin skating with Dylan Strome and Anthony Beauvillier and P-L Dubois centering for Connor McMichael and Tom Wilson.
In the bottom six, Lars Ellers is in the middle of a trio with Andrew Mangiapane and Ryan Leonard, and Nic Dowd centers for Brandon Duhaime and Taylor Raddysh.
Ethen Frank skated as the 13th forward on Saturday; he suited up for two of the Caps’ last four regular season games. And goaltender Clay Stevenson, who showed quite well in a losing effort in his NHL debut in Thursday’s season finale in Pittsburgh, remains with the team as well. Stevenson was on the ice Saturday, though Thompson and Charlie Lindgren got virtually all the reps during the main body of practice.
The Caps will conduct another dress rehearsal on Sunday morning at MedStar Capitals Iceplex, and after Monday’s morning skate, they’ll drop the puck and start the playoffs at home for the first time since 2021. A crowd of just 5,333 witnessed the Caps overcome the Bruins 3-2 on Nic Dowd’s overtime game-winner in that Game 1 here on May 15, 2021.
Among the Caps in the lineup that night just under four years ago, only five are on the squad today: Dowd, Carlson, Eller, Ovechkin and Wilson.
Those 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs were the last ones to feature the Canadiens prior to this year’s model, and the Habs went on a storybook run to the Cup final that spring before bowing to Tampa Bay. Montreal ousted Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vegas, respectively, in the first three rounds of those playoffs four years back.
And while the veteran Caps have only five players remaining from their 2021 playoff crew, the Habs, who we’re told are emerging from a rebuild, have six leftovers from the same spring, all of them forwards: Anderson, Joel Armia, Caufield, Jake Evans, Gallagher, and Suzuki.
The excitement is building. The best time of year is almost here.
“That’s why you work hard all year, to be able to be in this position, to be in this situation,” says Ovechkin. “It’s a fun time of the year for everybody.”
