Do It Again – The San Jose Sharks are in town, supplying the opposition for the middle match of the Caps’ three-game homestand. Two nights ago in the opener against the Canadiens, Washington engineered a stirring third period comeback, culminating with Connor McMichael’s net front strike and a 3-2 win in the final minute of overtime.
Once again, the Caps find themselves with an opportunity to follow up a victory with another one, something they haven’t been able to do for six weeks. Since their six-game winning streak ended with a 7-1 win over the Sharks in San Jose on Dec. 3, the Caps have won seven of 19 games (7-8-4) for a lukewarm points pct. of .474. That’s 23rd in the League, and more alarmingly 11th in the Eastern Conference over that span.
Each of the Capitals’ last seven victories has been followed by a loss (0-5-2) and each of their last five wins has been followed by a regulation loss. With two games left on the homestand and a season-long, six-game, 12-day road trip looming, these last two games on the homestand are critical ones for Washington.
Blue Heaven – With Jakob Chychrun out of the lineup for a second straight game with illness, Thompson and the Caps’ blueline corps did yeoman’s work in limiting the Habs to a single goal at 5-on-5 on Monday. Each of the Caps’ six defensemen was even or well above even in controlling shot attempts at 5-on-5
John Carlson shouldered nearly 28 minutes while leading the team in shots (seven), shot attempts (11) and blocked shots (three).
Rasmus Sandin assisted on all three Washington goals – including a precision pass to Ethen Frank for the game-tying goal in a 6-on-5 situation – and logged a single-game season high of 23:43.
Perhaps most importantly, Carlson, Matt Roy, Trevor van Riemsdyk and Martin Fehervary all logged at least 2:45 in shorthanded ice time to help the Caps kill off a Montreal 5-on-3 power play of 64 seconds in duration when the Habs were holding a 2-0 lead.
“Those are huge, especially in games where it’s still tight,” says van Riemsdyk of the 5-on-3 kill. “If you can kill a 5-on-3, you gain some momentum from that for sure. It’s a turning point in the game. If you go down three, it feels like then you’ve really got to start chasing it. And against a team like theirs that can play in transition and is pretty deadly when they get chances, that’s not the type of game you want to have to play.”
Offensively, the Caps’ back end also deserves some credit for turning Tuesday’s game around. Over the first 40 minutes of that game, the Caps’ blueline group teed up just nine shot attempts, getting five of them through to the net. But over the final 24:21 – the third period and overtime – Washington defensemen attempted 17 shots and got 11 of them on goal.
Establishing that low-to-high game in the offensive zone typically leads to good things for the Caps when they’re able to get it working.
“I think that’s when we’re at our best,” says van Riemsdyk. “You see these nice seam plays and all that type of stuff, but that’s usually after you’ve had some zone time, after you’ve gone low to high, gotten a shot, got the rebound back, and then those plays open up. I thought we did a good job of not being stubborn and looking for better plays. We just simplified, got pucks up top and tried to deliver them. We’ve got big bodies that are hard to deal with, and it worked out.”
Find My Way – Since Ethen Frank notched his first career multi-goal game in Montreal on Nov. 20, he has netted 10 goals in 27 games, tied for fourth on the team. And across that same stretch, Ryan Leonard has notched 18 points (four goals, 14 assists) in 20 games and Justin Sourdif has 16 points (seven goals, nine assists) in 25 games.
Leonard and Sourdif are rookies, and while Frank’s age made him too old for official NHL rookie status last season and this season, he would have qualified as a rookie this season if not for his age.
The bottom line here is that Washington is getting significant offensive contributions from three players with less than a full season’s worth of NHL games under their belt, which has helped keep the team viable in the playoff hunt during a recent fallow stretch of the season in terms of results. Leonard turns 21 on Wednesday and Sourdif turns 24 in March, and those two players are the two youngest on the roster as it’s currently constituted.
The Caps’ third youngest player is center Hendrix Lapierre, who turns 24 on Feb. 9. Lapierre would have seemed a good bet for a breakout season back on opening night. Lapierre had a dominant preseason, and in the second half of the 2023-24 season, he looked like a good bet to become a viable top nine forward for the Caps.
Lapierre finished that 2023-24 season with the Caps, and he was productive after being recalled from AHL in late February. From the time of his recall to the end of the season, he played in all 26 remaining games, the longest stretch of uninterrupted stretch of his career until he played 28 straight games earlier this season.
With 15 points – the same number Frank has in his last 27 games – in his last 26 games of the ’23-24 season in the NHL, Lapierre was fourth on the Caps in scoring over the final third of that season. He trailed only Dylan Strome, Alex Ovechkin and John Carlson, and was one of the reasons the Caps were able to slip into the final Eastern Conference playoff berth on the final night of the season with a win in Philadelphia.
And after the Caps were bounced from the postseason, Lapierre returned to Hershey and put up seven goals and 22 points in 20 Calder Cup playoff games to help lead the Bears to a second straight Calder Cup championship.
But last season, Lapierre started slowly, and the Caps made a move to reacquire Lars Eller from Pittsburgh. Weeks later, they returned Lapierre to Hershey where he again was a standout, with seven goals and 32 points in 32 games.
His excellent preseason performance in September landed him a spot on the roster and in the lineup, but while Frank, Leonard and Sourdif have seen their ice time increase since the outset of the season, Lapierre’s ice time has decreased. He was averaging 10:52 per game in October, but that figure has dipped each month since and is at 7:08 per game thus far in January.
With exemplary peers like Leonard, Sourdif, Frank and Connor McMichael on the roster, we wondered whether perhaps Lapierre could go to school on the trajectory some of his teammates have taken to break into Washington’s top nine forward group, to play more and to play more meaningful minutes.
“It’s a really difficult question to answer because Lappy is in a unique spot,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “What Frankie had to do, he had to not make the NHL, but he had to prove and show that he could be a reliable NHL player. And what I mean by that is nothing to do with scoring and nothing to do with showing his speed. He had to show that he could get a puck out on the wall, he could be in the right spot in our systems, he could get the puck in when he needed to. And so that starts as a small role – six, seven, eight minutes a night on the fourth line. Frankie did that, and he earned the trust from the coaching staff.
“So then what happens? It doesn’t change anything. We just go, ‘Wow, we can play him every night. So, now he plays every night. Okay, what’s the next step?’ Now, when you get that eight or nine minutes, can you do something with that? Get a half breakaway, set up a goal, use your skill set, show your skill set in that seven, eight minutes of what you’re going to do at a really high level in this League. It might be checking, it might be physical. It might be that you’re going to be a physically imposing player, and so you lay three or four big hits in your eight minutes, and now that eight minutes turns into 10.
“So for Lap, I think it’s just taking that next step. If he is going to be an offensive player in the National Hockey League, he’s making a few more plays. Can he make two or three high end plays where you get a puck, you attack, you get inside and it creates a scoring chance or you get a scoring chance yourself? And it might not end up in the back of the net, but if you do those over time and you increase it by one every five or six [games], now I think that’s where us as coaches, when you watch the film and that, we’re watching that and we’ll say, ‘Wow, this guy’s [improved], get him on the power play, let’s go.’
“Exactly what happened with Ethen Frank. Gets on the power play, and now he gets on the first unit power play. It’s a long-winded way of answering how you can turn eight, seven, six minutes into 10.”
Lapierre’s analytics and his underlying numbers remain strong, but the production hasn’t been there. He has also had a revolving door of linemates and sporadic ice time, but as Carbery notes, he’ll need to earn the extra ice, as his teammates did.
As was the case with Frank and Sourdif, Carbery isn’t concerned as much with production as he is with reliability in all three zones and consistency on a night in, night out basis, the same things he seeks from all young players.
“I think I can elevate in a lot of areas,” says Lapierre in assessing his own game. “Obviously, the underlying numbers are relatively good, but I think it’s time for results now. We can say, ‘Oh, when he’s on the ice good things happen,’ and stuff like that, but myself included, I want results. I want to put the puck in the back of the net and help the team win, be on the ice for goals for.
“I think it’s about attacking more. You know how that goes; when you don’t play that good or maybe the results are not there, maybe you’re a little more hesitant or you don’t attack as much. I feel like when I had success at the end of two seasons ago and in the AHL, I attack, I make plays, and I hang onto the puck. I feel like right now, I’m overthinking at times. There are a couple of times where I get the puck and it’s like, ‘Okay, what now?’ and I’m thinking, ‘Don’t turn it over,’ and stuff like that.”
Lapierre’s attitude is always positive, and he badly wants to do all those things that Frank, Leonard and Sourdif have done to earn their keep. He wants elevate himself and his game back to where he was just under two years ago, when he was playing every night and skating 13 productive minutes per night in the best League in the world.
“I’m not disappointed with my game, but I have a lot more to bring and I think it’s time for results,” says Lapierre. “And I need to attack, I need to use my speed, and I need to make plays. But I’ve got to build it back slowly; it’s not going to happen from one day to another. As much as I want to do it, sometimes when you’re in the middle of the action, you’re like, ‘I don’t want to turn it over,’ and stuff like that. It’s obviously a little complicated, but I just want to use my speed a little more, and attack and be a shooting threat more.”
The game is so mental, and that can be especially true when you’re still a player in your early twenties with just over 100 games in the League. Lapierre has sought counsel from more experienced teammates at times, and they’ve been helpful.
“They’ve helped me a lot, they’ve helped me a ton,” says Lapierre of his veteran teammates. “There’s a bunch of them that talk to me and give me advice, like, ‘Hey, that last play, you did a great job, but maybe you can attack a little bit more, we all knew you were passing the puck,’ and stuff like that.
“Like [Anthony Beauvillier], he’s been in the League a while. When I was at his house, I would talk to him a lot and he’s like, ‘I know how you feel, man, trust me. I know how you feel. It’s not easy, but you’re going to get out of it.’
“We have a tremendous room, as you guys know, we’re really close, and so a lot of the guys have helped me. And I’m in a good mental state – everything is good – I just think it’s time for results now.”
Lapierre needs something good to happen. He needs a bounce or two to go his way, he needs a defining shift or three, or even just a puck bouncing off his skate and finding the net. When things aren’t going your way – and when you’re spending more and more of the game watching from the bench – it’s easy to think too much, and to overthink. And that can be a hockey player’s worst enemy, especially a young hockey player.
“Everything seems so much slower and you see so much more ice,” says Lapierre of what it feels like when he isn’t overthinking. “But again, you have to enter that state, and it’s not easy. But there is for sure a difference between when you’re in that zone, and you’re feeling good and confident and when you’re trying not to make a mistake.”
In The Nets – Logan Thompson will be in net for Washington tonight, seeking his 18th victory of the season. In his last four starts, Thompson is 2-1-1 with a 1.94 GAA and a .932 save pct. He has yielded just three goals against at 5-on-5, stopping 78 of the last 81 shots he has faced for a .963 save pct.
Lifetime against the Sharks, Thompson is 4-1-2 with a shutout, a 1.70 GAA and a .938 save pct. in seven appearances, all starts.
Alex Nedeljkovic will be in goal for the Sharks tonight, making his 200 th NHL appearance in this, his ninth season in the League. After toiling for Carolina, Detroit and Pittsburgh earlier in his career, Nedeljkovic is in his first season with San Jose. He came to the Sharks in a July 1, 2025 trade with Pittsburgh, which received a third-round pick in the 2028 NHL Draft in return.
On the season, Nedeljkovic is 7-8-2 with a 3.12 GAA and an .890 save pct. in 20 appearances (16 starts). Lifetime against the Capitals, he is 2-2-0 in six appearances (three starts) with a 3.08 GAA and an .867 save pct.
All Down The Line – Here’s how the Caps and Sharks might look on Thursday night in the District:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 53-Frank
21-Protas, 24-McMichael, 9-Leonard
15-Milano, 29-Lapierre, 20-Leason
22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 72-Beauvillier
Defensemen
42-Fehervary, 74-Carlson
6-Chychrun, 3-Roy
38-Sandin, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Healthy Extras
47-Chisholm
52-McIlrath
Injured/Out
34-Sourdif (upper body)
43-Wilson (lower body)
80-Dubois (abdomen)
SAN JOSE
Forwards
92-Chernyshov, 71-Celebrini, 51-Graf
72-Eklund, 21-Wennberg, 73-Toffoli
84-Regenda, 77-Misa, 81-Gaudette
23-Goodrow, 63-Ostapchuk, 75-Reaves
Defensemen
9-Orlov, 3-Klingberg
38-Ferraro, 37-Liljegren
6-Dickinson, 22-Iorio
Goalies
33-Nedeljkovic
30-Askarov
Healthy Extras
4-Leddy
53-Skinner
Injured/Out
2-Smith (upper body)
5-Desharnais (upper body)
10-Dellandrea (lower body)
85-Mukhamadullin (upper body)
96-Kurashev (upper body)
