Road Worn And Weary – A week ago this afternoon, the Caps were on Long Island to start a four-game road trip; they flew straight to California after winning a 4-1 decision from the Islanders last Sunday.
Yesterday, the Caps flew back from California after a highly successful 3-0-1 road trip in which they never trailed on the scoreboard in 245 minutes of hockey, and they returned home sitting atop both the Eastern Conference and Metro Division standings.
But not all is well in Washington this Sunday. Just as he was hitting his stride as a rookie in the NHL, Caps right wing Ryan Leonard will be out for “an extended period of time” after taking a high, hard hit from Anaheim defenseman Jacob Trouba in the first period of Friday night’s 4-3 shootout loss to the Ducks in Anaheim.
In his last full game prior to being injured, Leonard had two goals and four points against the Sharks in San Jose. He has four goals and 10 points in his last 10 games, a level of production that will be difficult to replace.
Washington will also be missing the services of goaltender Charlie Lindgren, who was placed on injured reserve with an upper body injury. Lindgren picked up his fifth win of the season last Wednesday in San Jose, and he is 4-0-0 with a 2.25 GAA and a .912 save pct. in his last five appearances (four starts).
“Ryan will see the doctors today,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “He’s going to miss an extended period of time.
“Charlie, we’ll see once he gets back on the ice, but we put him on the IR. So he’ll miss seven days at the bare minimum, and then we’ll see how he progresses.
With Leonard and Lindgren on the sidelines, Washington recalled forward Bogdan Trineyev and goaltender Clay Stevenson from AHL Hershey on Sunday morning. Stevenson will dress as the Capitals’ backup goaltender for tonight’s game.
Defenseman John Carlson, who missed the last two games of the trip with an upper body injury, was on the ice for Sunday’s morning skate, and Carbery says Carlson will be a game time decision for tonight’s game with the Blue Jackets.
Tonight’s game with Columbus comes about 24 hours after the Capitals landed at Dulles on their return flight from last week’s trip that spanned four games in six nights and covered more than 5,000 air miles. After spending most of the last week on the West Coast, the Caps are trying to readjust their body clocks as they get set to skate in their sixth game in the last 10 nights, a game that feels like just another stop in the road trip.
“We’re doing exactly that; we’re trying to group this in with the road trip,” says Carbery, who, like most coaches, breaks the season into smaller groups of games. “It's another game inside of our road trip. Yeah, it's at home. We've been back for whatever, it'll be probably be around 24 hours by the time the puck drops.
“But we have to have the similar mindset that we can't let our foot off the gas, or [think] that now that we're back home, all of a sudden we think that things are going to come easy. We have to have to have a little bit of a road mindset tonight, and make sure that we're finishing this segment/trip the right way and playing to our standard.”
Special Delivery – One strong sidelight of the Caps’ successful road trip was the performance of both of their special team units across the four games. Despite never trailing on the trip and playing from ahead for 152 minutes and 39 seconds of the 245 minutes of hockey they played over the last week, the Caps faced 15 shorthanded situations last week and had only nine power plays of their own.
The Caps scored on the power play in each of the first three games of the journey and went 3-for-9 overall (33.3 percent) with the extra man. From Nov. 15 through Dec. 2, the Washington penalty-killing outfit went a dozen straight games without being tasked with more than three shorthanded situations, and then it faced five shorthanded situations in each of the last two games of the trip, yielding just one power-play goal – a third-period goal in a 7-1 win over the Sharks in San Jose.
Overall on the four-game trip, the Caps killed 13 of 15 penalties (86.7 percent) to bring home an even 120.0 special team index, one of their best stretches of the season in that department.
In The Nets – Logan Thompson gets the net for Washington tonight, taking a second crack at nailing down his 100th career NHL victory. Thompson has allowed two or fewer goals against in 15 of his 20 starts this season, and he is 4-0-1 with a 1.57 GAA and a .942 save pct. in his last five starts.
Lifetime against Columbus, Thompson is 4-1-0 with a 2.26 GAA and a .929 save pct. in six appearances (five starts). Two of those four career wins over the Jackets came exactly a month apart – on Oct. 24 in Columbus and Nov. 24 in Washington – earlier this season, and by identical 5-1 scores.
Elvis Merzlikins started for Columbus on Saturday in Florida when the Jackets opened their three-game road trip with a 7-6 overtime loss against the Panthers. Merzlikins yielded seven goals on 40 shots in the loss, and the Caps are virtually certain to see Jet Greaves in goal for the Jackets tonight in Washington.
For the first month of the season, Merzlikins and Greaves essentially alternated starting assignments, much as Lindgren and Thompson did for Washington during much of the 2024-25 regular season. Greaves then had a run of five straight starts, and he started four of six Columbus games right after those five in a row. Saturday’s start was Merzlikins’ third consecutive start, and his first run of consecutive starts all season. He went 2-0-1 during that three-start run, but yielded 15 goals against in the process.
Lifetime against the Capitals, Greaves is 2-1-1 in four appearances – all starts – with a shutout, a 1.98 GAA and a .933 save pct.
All Down The Line – Here’s how the Capitals and the Blue Jackets might look on Sunday night in DC:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
72-Beauvillier, 17-Strome, 8-Ovechkin
21-Protas, 34-Sourdif, 43-Wilson
24-McMichael, 26-Dowd, 15-Milano
22-Duhaime, 29-Lapierre, 53-Frank
Defensemen
42-Fehervary, 38-Sandin
6-Chychrun, 3-Roy
47-Chisholm, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
33-Stevenson
Healthy Extras
52-McIlrath
87-Trineyev
Injured/Out
9-Leonard (upper body)
74-Carlson (upper body)
79-Lindgren (upper body)
80-Dubois (lower body)
COLUMBUS
Forwards
10-Voronkov, 19-Fantilli, 86-Marchenko
4-Sillinger, 23-Monahan, 91-Johnson
11-Wood, 3-Coyle, 21-Lundestrom
16-Gaunce, 65-Del Bel Belluz, 59-Chinakhov
Defensemen
8-Werenski, 9-Provorov
5-Mateychuk, 78-Severson
7-Smith, 15-Fabbro
Goalies
73-Greaves
90-Merzlikins
Healthy Extras
2-Christiansen
27-Aston-Reese
Injured/Out
24-Olivier (upper body)
38-Jenner (upper body)
44-Gudbranson (hip)
