Last season, the Washington Capitals celebrated their 50th anniversary season in style. Caps captain Alex Ovechkin made League history with a remarkable 44-goal season at age 39, surpassing Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL goals record (894) in the waning days of the season.
As a team, the Capitals turned in their best regular season performance over an 82-game season since 2016-17, posting a 20-point improvement that helped Caps bench boss Spencer Carbery win the Jack Adams Award in a landslide; he landed the first-place vote on 81 of 103 ballots and was left entirely off of just one single ballot.
Washington finished atop the Eastern Conference standings – also for the first time since ’16-17 – and it managed to win a first-round Stanley Cup playoff series for the first time since winning the Stanley Cup in 2017-18.
And perhaps most significantly, while longtime Washington stalwarts Ovechkin, John Carlson and Tom Wilson were all at the tops of their games last season, a few homegrown youngsters stepped and elevated their games and levels, and a bevy of newcomers were seamlessly integrated into what quickly became a tight-knit and fun-loving team.
On opening night of last season against New Jersey, six players made their Caps debut. It was the fourth time in franchise history – a span of 3,880 games at that point – in which six or more players debuted for Washington in the same game.
All four occurrences came on opening night of a season. The first was obviously the first game in franchise history on Oct. 9, 1974 when 18 players donned the sweater for the first time. The second was the night Rod Langway, Scott Stevens, Craig Laughlin, Brian Engblom, Doug Jarvis and five others debuted on Oct. 6, 1982, and the third was Oct. 5, 2005 when Alex Ovechkin and eight others suited up in the black and bronze together.
With those seven new faces – goaltender Logan Thompson didn’t play on opening night – Caps meshed quickly, started swiftly and ascended to the top of the Eastern Conference standings by the end of November, and they sat atop the Conference at the end of every month for the remainder of the season.
This season, the new faces are fewer; the Caps did most of their long-term roster work over the last 15 months with a slew of acquisitions in the summer of 2024 and a series of contract extensions announced since. Only defenseman Declan Chisholm and forward Justin Sourdif are first-year Caps in 2025-26. Both were acquired in late June, Chisholm from Minnesota and Sourdif from Florida.
Last year’s group and the two newest Caps will set out to show that last season was no fluke; it’s who the Caps believe they are, an elite NHL team. As was the case at this time last season, skeptics abound.
“I think it’s just continuing to push the envelope,” says Carbery. “I think we have a highly motivated group, not only as a team, but individually. There were a lot of positives and a lot of things that went our way last year as a team, and then individually. And that’s one of the main points that is my job to bring to the forefront, is we need to be trying to push to get to another level.
“As a team, we found that out in the second round of the playoffs, and also individually. So whether you had a career high in goals or a career high in points, or you earned a long-term contract, it doesn’t change a thing from our mindset coming into camp and what you’re trying to accomplish this season. You’re trying to have a better season than you had, whether you’re John Carslon, Alex Ovechkin, or Spencer Carbery as a coach.
“I’m trying to push myself to be a better coach this year, do a better job and find ways to help our players more often. I don’t think it’s any different for our whole group; we’ve got motivated guys who are going to come in and try to have an even better year this year.”
When Washington opened last season, they had a pair of undrafted goaltenders – in Thompson and Charlie Lindgren – who were headed into the final season of their respective contracts. Both played well enough to earn long-term extensions, and they’re under contract to share the netminding duty for the next three seasons.
Last season was the first in Caps history in which every minute of the team’s netminding workload was handled by an undrafted goaltender; Hunter Shepard had a late season start in Columbus and Clay Stevenson played the regular season finale in Pittsburgh.
Over the last two NHL seasons, Thompson is tied for seventh in the League with 56 victories (56-20-11) despite ranking 27th in the circuit in starts over that span. Lindgren has 45 wins (45-30-10) to rank 22nd in the NHL in wins. Only Buffalo – with Alexandar Georgiev (53 wins) and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen (51) – also has a pair of netminders within the top 22 in wins over the last two seasons.
With a splendid 31-6-6 record, a 2.49 GAA and a .910 save pct., Thompson had a terrific first season in DC. He finished fourth in balloting for the Vezina Trophy and increased his win total for the fourth straight season.
“I just want to win games, get back to where we were last year, keep proving people wrong,” says Thompson. “That’s my biggest mindset, I want to do my job and get as many wins for the Washington Capitals as I can, and to be supportive of my teammates and be supportive of Chucky, and just be each other’s biggest fan.”
Both goaltenders are driven, passionate, competitive players who have spent their careers defying and exceeding expectations, so little attitude adjustment is needed from either of them.
“It’s really nice,” says Lindgren. “You look at last year, and we were both on expiring deals. I think it made for obviously an uber competitive situation, but it was a good kind of competitive.
“Now, he signed a six-year deal, and I signed a three-year deal, but at the end of the day we’re both still very much focused on what’s going on the present and what’s going on right now. Again, you never know what can happen in this business, but certainly we’re just going to continue to work hard every single day. We’ve got a good partnership going on, and we want to make the most of it.”
Last season’s twin additions of Jakob Chychrun and Matt Roy on the blueline reminded some longtime Caps fans of 1982 when Rod Langway and Brian Engblom came over in a trade with Montreal or 2014 when Matt Niskanen and Brooks Orpik were signed as free agents. Significant and sustained success for the Caps followed each of those previous instances, and the first season with the two new blueliners became one of the best seasons from a group of Washington defensemen in decades.
For the first time in franchise history, the Caps had six defensemen with 20 or more points last season, and they’ve got all six of those defensemen returning in 2025-26. All six also had plus/minus ratings that were plus-13 or better. Washington had five blueliners with 20 or more points and plus-13 or better in 1984-85, the previous franchise record. That quintet featured Hockey Hall of Famers Langway, Stevens and Larry Murphy, as well as Mike McEwen and Darren Veitch.
The current group is extremely balanced in terms of skill sets and – with Chisholm and rookie Vincent Iorio rounding out the opening night roster – features four lefties and four right-handed sticks.
In addition to their season long offensive contributions, the Caps’ defense corps helped trim the team’s GAA from 3.07 (16th in the NHL) in 2023-24 to 2.79 (tied for 8th) last season.
Carlson logged his seventh 50-point season and surpassed 700 career points. The additions of Chychrun and Roy, the continuing upward evolutions of both Martin Fehervary and Rasmus Sandin, and the presence of ever steady and versatile Trevor van Riemsdyk allowed Carbery and his staff to ease Carlson’s nightly workload by more than two minutes a night.
Heading into his 17th NHL season and just a dozen games shy of 1,100 for his career, Carlson believes the expectation to win and be successful is ingrained throughout the organization, and that will also fuel the Caps’ fire as the season wears on.
“Whether you get drafted here,” begins Carlson, “whether you sign here, get traded here, or you just come in the locker room – whatever it is – I think everybody expects to win. And there's more to it than that, but I think just the mentality of winning is important, and I hope that I would play some part in that. Certainly, it starts with expectations, and Ovi has set the table really well for everyone.
“You get traded, you get a call, and on the first day you show up, it's blatantly clear what our goal is. And it helps to have that continuity of Hershey to here, and that mindset instead of, ‘Oh, we're going to develop you and we're going to make you a great player so that you can make the NHL,’ – and that's all good and glory too; and they do that, within wanting to win and expecting to have success. I think that's huge for all players within the organization. I hope we all hold each other accountable to that standard.”
For a stretch of 59 games from early November to late March of last season, the Caps deployed the same six blueliners in every game; Dylan McIlrath dressed as a seventh defenseman for one game in December, the only other defenseman to see game action over that span. Washington went 38-12-9 over that span (.720 point pct., tops in the League during that span), scoring 3.54 goals per game (2nd) and allowing 2.47 goals against per game (3rd).
“It’s just continuing to push and continuing to get more comfortable in our system,” says Chychrun who scored 20 goals in his first season as a Capital and earned a seven-year contract extension. “Guys have now played together for good parts of last year and we’re able to see that familiarity with some lines and some chemistry. Guys are just a little more comfortable in understanding guys’ tendencies. But we have to push and we have to work; we can’t come in and expect that we’re going to replicate last year if we don’t continue to work with one another and try to make each other better each day.”
Up front, the Caps return the same group of top six forwards – P-L Dubois, Connor McMichael, Aliaksei Protas, Ovechkin, Dylan Strome and Wilson. Strome’s 82 points led all Caps last season, and all six forwards had at least 57 points, a feat the franchise hadn’t achieved since 1992-93 when they also had six.
The Caps can’t expect Ovechkin to score 44 goals again and they probably can’t expect to have four of their top six forwards shoot with an efficiency rate of 18.6 to 21.1 percent, as was the case last season. They do hope to have better scoring depth this season, with a full season from rookie Ryan Leonard, who had an impressive training camp, and Anthony Beauvillier, who joined the team at the March trade deadline and signed a two-year contract extension in July.
Two other forwards who had impressive training camps were among the team’s top five scorers over the final third of 2023-24, that’s Hendrix Lapierre and Sonny Milano. Washington was a scoring challenged outfit that season, and the usual suspects – Strome, Ovechkin, and Carlson, respectively, were the team’s top three scorers over the final 26 games when the Caps put together a successful push for the final playoff berth.
Playing on a line with recently retired Max Pacioretty and Milano during that stretch drive, Lapierre was fourth on the team with 15 points (six goals, nine assists) and Milano was fifth with a dozen (nine goals, three assists).
That group of players – with McMichael potentially joining them at times as a third-line center – is expected to form a reliable and consistent third line for Washington this season, and they should be able to generate some offense to offset shooting percentage regression among the top six.
“Even if guys do the exact same thing as they did last year, our team's going to be really good,” says McMichael. “In terms of guys like Pro, myself, Lappy, there's plenty of guys that still have tons of room to grow and get better, and Sonny. We’ve got Sonny coming back this year, which is going to be huge. We just keep adding pieces to our lineup that are going to help us.”
Milano and Lapierre were both among preseason NHL leaders in scoring, and Milano has averaged .48 points per game as a Capital while averaging just 12:35 per game in ice time. The only other forward in the NHL who has produced at that level of points per game with less nightly ice time over that span is former Capital Daniel Sprong (.56 point per game with 11:49 per night), who is now plying his trade with CSKA Moscow in the KHL.
The 23-year-old Lapierre has logged 84 NHL games, with respectable totals of nine goals and 31 points, given a nightly average of just 10:47 in ice time. He struggled out of the gates last season and spent the second half of the campaign at AHL Hershey, but his fire and determination were unmistakable at camp this season.
Carbery is also a tireless and diligent coach who has spent countless hours over the summer considering ways of keeping his team’s offense humming. McMichael playing in the middle is one key potential scenario, and skating the left side of a line with Dubois last season should rub off on him in more ways than one, says Carbery, who isn’t shy about challenging his players with responsibility and increased roles when earned and merited.
“One is seeing the nuances and watching [Dubois] play, and the intelligence, and his positioning and how good he is in all those [aspects],” says Carbery. “Just seeing that, playing with him, being around that you're going to pick up knowledge and expertise at the position being a 200-foot centerman.
“The other thing that I think it'll help Mikey with is what sometimes takes a while for centermen – and not even centermen, forwards in general in the National Hockey League – is a grown appreciation for being able to be reliable and be a 200-foot player, and the rewards that come along with that, that sometimes don't show up on the score sheet that they want.
“So to see Dubie celebrated, making a lot of money, and having a long-term contract, for a player like Connor McMichael, I think that goes a long way to see that. ‘Okay, I don't have to get 100 points. I don't have to get 45 goals. I can be a 30-goal, 40-assist, [or] 30 and 30 guy, 25 and 40 guy, and play a good 200-foot game and penalty kill and play power play and be very, very successful and earn a long future and a lot of money in this league.’ And I think that's important, because I will point to that with him a lot. It's contract year for him; he is RFA for us. And what you'll see is it's going to take a little bit of time, because Mikey needs to be on the ice, right? He has to be on the ice. And Nic Dowd needs his minutes.
“But there's been some good communication this summer. Stromer and I had a conversation which was great. He's like, ‘This is going to be great for our team, because we felt like our third line was sort of our fourth line, and the third line is an important line.’ Your top six is important for sure, but your third line is an important line.”
Carbery also took note of the Florida Panthers’ dominant third line in the playoffs last season as they nailed down a second straight Stanely Cup championship last spring.
“What was great was watching Florida,” he says. “One of the differentiators for me was Brad Marchand, [Eetu] Luostarinen and [Anton] Lundell. That line, to me, you could make a strong argument wins them that series. Marchand obviously was phenomenal in his own right, but those other two guys along with him play a big part in that line, in the success and in the production of that line.
“And Mikey will get moved around. Connor McMichael needs to be out on the ice, so in certain situations where we are trailing in a game, will he potentially move up with Stromer and Dubie? For sure. No doubt, no doubt about it in those games. But it will be a little bit different, getting used to us rolling [four lines] and Mikey needs important shifts, and he needs offensive zone starts. So us just going with Stromer 90 percent of the time, it’s just not going to be the same recipe all the time.”
And with Dubois adding penalty killing chores to his plate after he turned in a stellar first season in Washington as a two-way, 200-foot, top six player, his ice time is likely to increase, and with it, the potential for more offense from him as well.
“He's probably going to lead our team [in ice time],” declares Carbery of Dubois. “And that's where he and [Protas] have to be conditioned. This is what I challenged them with [as they were] leaving is, ‘If you want to play power play, penalty kill, five-on-five, you’ve got to have a motor. Look at [Florida center Sasha] Barkov. He plays all three of those situations, he's a big guy,’ because they always point to their size.
“They're like, ‘Carbs, I'm a big guy. I'm a big, six-[foot something guy], it's hard to get around the ice.’ No doubt it is, no doubt. But that's the responsibility. If you want to play 21 minutes a night as a 6-foot-4, 220-pound guy, you’ve got to have the motor like [Toronto’s] Auston [Matthews] has it, like Barkov.
“But that’s going to be their challenges. We used Pro like two games on the power play, and I know that wasn’t necessarily fair, but I was so hesitant to do that because I felt like it would go [down], his penalty kill and his 5-on-5 minutes. I didn’t feel he was ready for that responsibility and the physical conditioning to be able to do that, and to sustain a high level of play on the penalty kill, at 5-on-5 and on the power play. I’m respectful that it’s a lot of heavy lifting, but if you want to play in those situations and those minutes, I want you to be out there, but you’ve got to show me that you can still maintain that high level of play on the penalty kill and at 5-on-5.”
For Dubois, adding more offense could be as simple as altering his mindset a bit. He grew up playing defense before switching to left wing, and then center.
“In Columbus, I started playing with [Artemi] Panarin,” says Dubois, referring to his days with the Blue Jackets. “And it'd be a 5-1 game – we're up 5-1 – and there’s, six, seven, eight minutes left. And in my mind, I'm like, ‘Okay, my job is done tonight. I have a goal, I have an assist. It's 5-1. My game's done, just no injuries, no mistakes; play it safe and we move on to the next game.’
“And [Panarin] is yelling at me to make more offensive plays. ‘We got two points now. Let's get three. We get three, let's go get four.’ So you have guys like that it's just never enough. And that's one of the reasons they end up with 120 or 110 or 100 [points], because they're always hungry for more. And for me, it's just about helping the team win. And in a 5-1 game for me, if I want to help the team win, it's being a good F3 if they're going to take chances, it's to be on high alert for trick plays, face-off plays, all that.
“In my mind, we don't need another goal. We just need to not give up another goal. That's kind of always been my mindset.”
Dowd enters his eighth season in the middle of what is annually among the best fourth lines in the NHL and what was essentially the team’s third line last season. Their brand is playing tough and stingy against one of the opponent’s top lines while being tasked with an inordinate amount of defensive zone draws and staying above water.
Brandon Duhaime proved to be a most excellent fit on his left side, and the Dowd-Duhaime duo had a bit of a revolving door on the right side with Taylor Raddysh – now with the Rangers – most frequently deployed in that role.
Duhaime was in his first season with the Caps in 2024-25, the gradual improvement in his game from one through 82 was quite evident. He was almost always one of the last players off the ice after practice, he worked frequently with assistant coach/skills Kenny McCudden. Duhaime also quickly became one of the most beloved guys in the room since Matt Hendricks, who would have also been a fine fit on this line in a different era.
The Dowd-Duhaime duo played together in all 82 games, logging 463:57 on the ice together. Despite taking a ridiculously low 16.60 percent of their face-offs in the offensive zone and typically facing strong competition, the duo turned an xGF% of 48.82 into an actual GF% of 59.26 (16-11). They weren’t as effective with Raddysh, so the Caps made a deal with Florida for Sourdif, filling the vacancy.
“I don’t think I stepped on the ice without Dewey last year, so it’s nice to have him back by my side,” says Dowd. “He is a great player; he’s constantly working on his game, which makes me better. It looks like he is going to pick up right where he left off and get better this season.
“I think it will be our job – just as guys who know the system – just to help [Sourdif] along, but honestly, I think it’s all about letting him play and not overcomplicating things, and letting him find his game and feel comfortable.”
Home drafted and developed players like Fehervary, McMichael and Protas all took great leaps with their individual games at the NHL level last season. An entire new crop of promising first-year pros is on the verge of launching their careers as pro players in AHL Hershey this season.
As Ovechkin and Carlson head into the final season of long-term contracts in 2025-26, the Caps can take some comfort in having identified a significant chunk of what is expected to be their core group as we move into the back half of the decade. Ten players – four forwards, four defensemen and two goaltenders – are under contract for the next three seasons, and eight of the 10 are signed for longer than that.
But that’s all management stuff. The players’ focus is squarely on this season. They believe they’re even more comfortable and tighter together as a group this time around, and they’re also motivated by falling short in the playoffs last season, and by the lack of belief in their legitimacy around the hockey world.
“It was such a great year, but we obviously feel like we fell short,” says Chychrun. “We obviously had really high hopes for what we could do. We really believed that we were going to go all the way; I just think you have to have that mentality. And falling short sucks, but it’s good for us to experience that. And we talked about it; I think it’s the first time the club has won a first-round [series] since they won the Cup, and that’s a step in the right direction. So we’ve got to take the positives and try to build.”
“It’s not a huge difference from last year,” says Sandin. “If anything, I think the guys are even more comfortable around each other. But just coming into camp, I think everyone is just super excited, mostly just to see each other. We’re a very tight group, and people could probably see that last season from how we played together. But we also had a lot of fun off the ice, and same thing this year. Just super excited to get things rolling here this week.”
“We’re definitely more comfortable this year,” says Thompson. “We’re comfortable as well as – I think – confident with the guys that we have, knowing that we can do it and we’re hungry for more. We want to keep pushing for more. We know people again seem to keep doubting us about last year and maybe calling it a fluke. But the belief in our eyes and in this dressing room is that we can do it again.”
Following the Caps’ preseason finale, Carbery was asked whether he feels like his team still feels like they’re being written off.
“Yeah, yeah we do,” he says. “It doesn’t really change anything that we do, but we’re human beings, so people read things and hear things. It’s on us as a group – whether it’s outside people that think we’re a non-playoff team or that certain players can’t replicate the seasons that they had last year and it’s unsustainable or whatever, that stuff is fine and people are entitled to their opinion – it’s on us to do the things necessary to replicate a lot of the things that we did last year.
“Whether people think we’re going to do it or not do it, we’ve got a bunch of guys that are self-motivated young men that every day when they wake up – and myself and our staff included, support staff included – we’re going to be better than we were the previous day, and we’re going to get after it as hard as we possibly can.”
That’s never been a problem for any of the guys in the room, who tend to believe there is quite a bit about them – as a collection of about two dozen hockey players – that cannot be measured or quantified by analytics.
“Hockey is one of those sports where I think analytics have come along a little bit more slowly because it's so hard to measure what hockey is,” says Wilson. “You can be a better analytics player than some guys in this room, but when it comes down to it and the puck is in the corner, who’s going to go get it, who’s going to come out with it, and who's going to be a better team, and who's going to want to want it more?
“Last year, we had a bunch of guys that came together and had fun doing it and we worked really hard at it. That being said, I think within the group there's a lot of really good individual players. It's not always the case that a team clicks. And I think last year, when we all came together, it just worked. And if there was a perfect formula for it, everybody would go out and do it.
“So we have momentum that we need to build on from last year. But I think last year, everybody knew their role, knew their responsibility, knew what they needed to bring to the table, and it just worked from the get-go. I think you can always improve, but we have a foundation now that there's an expectation within this room that we're going to go out and win games – win meaningful games – and play together.
“And hockey is one of those sports where heart is a huge part of it, and there's statistics or moneyball for that. There's a lot of heart in this room; I think there's a lot of gamers. There's a lot of guys with great character, and that's not always measured by intangibles or numbers or whatever you want to call it.”
One through eighty-two are the numbers that primarily concern the Capitals right now, one game at a time. They believe their consistency from games one through eighty-two will return them to the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and once there, they can push their way further than last season.
