Back-To-Back – The Caps and Penguins kick off a set of weekend home-and home games on this final weekend of the 2025-26 NHL regular season. Saturday’s opener marks the first meeting between the two longtime rivals from the old Patrick Division days as well as the current Metropolitan Division situation since Nov. 6 when Pittsburgh prevailed 5-3 in the first of just three meetings between the two clubs this season.
Today was also likely to mark the 100th meeting across the 21-season careers of Washington captain Alex Ovechkin and Pittsburgh captain Sidney Crosby, but Crosby is one of several regulars sitting out Saturday’s contest to rest up a variety of upper body dents and lower body bumps for Pittsburgh, so if the odometer is going to turn over to triple digits in the Ovechkin-Crosby rivalry this season, it will have to wait until Sunday afternoon’s rematch in Washington.
For Saturday’s contest, the Caps will ice the same lineup that sparked them to a 4-0 win over the Maple Leafs in Toronto on Wednesday night in their most recent outing, a victory that kept their flickering playoff hopes alive into the weekend and the final three games of the season. After facing the Pens on Saturday and Sunday, the Caps travel to Columbus for Tuesday’s regular season finale against the Blue Jackets.
The Caps need to win all three of their remaining games and they need some help from outside sources if they’re going to shoehorn themselves into the playoffs just ahead of the season’s final buzzer, as they did two seasons ago.
“I wish I could say ‘yes,’” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery, asked whether the experience of the successful late season sprint to the playoffs might help his team do the same across these final three games of 2025-26. “There is a lot of belief in our team; there’s a handful of guys that are around from that year.
“I don’t know. I know how our coaching staff feels about us winning [Saturday] and just getting two points, and I know our group has a lot of confidence; they have all year, even when we’ve been in difficult spots and eight points out, so I think there is belief in there.”
Pittsburgh has already clinched a playoff berth; the Penguins will be returning to the Stanley Cup playoffs after a three-year absence. Under first-year head coach Dan Muse, the Pens have managed an 18-point improvement in the standings since last season, going from 80 points to 98, and with three games remaining.
“They’re having a tremendous year,” says Carbery of the Penguins. “I think offensively, they’re right up there with the top teams in the League. Special teams are both in the top 10; it’s helped them a lot.
“And then I think just for whatever reason, a resurgent year from [them]. I know there's more, and I'm probably forgetting one, but I look at five guys, veteran guys that have been in the League a long time, that have all had really, really good years. And not that they didn't have good years last year, but [Bryan] Rust, [Rickard] Rakell, Crosby, [Evgeni] Malkin, Erik Karlsson … those guys seem to have almost as they get older in their career, you're like, ‘Ah, can they sustain it?’ It's almost like they've made a little push this year to get back and find the fountain of youth a little bit with those guys.
“And so, we know all those names really, really well, and they're tremendous players and have had incredible careers. And so, they're playing at a real high level right now.”
Beau Knows PK – Anthony Beauvillier is – along with Brandon Duhaime and Ovechkin – one of three Capitals to have played all 79 of the team’s games to this point. Now in his 10th season in the NHL, Beauvillier has taken on a new role to him with the Caps this season, working on Washington’s penalty killing unit.
Prior to this season, the veteran forward had averaged more than 30 seconds a game in shorthanded ice time only in 2017-18 (45 seconds) and in 2019-20 (39 seconds), the second and fourth seasons of his NHL career, respectively.
But entering today’s game, Beauvillier is averaging 1:11 per game in shorthanded ice time this season, the highest figure of his decade in the League.
“I take a lot of pride in being able to kill penalties,” says Beauvillier. “I think it just adds something to my game, and it's fun; I like it. I think it just makes you feel more important to the team, and it feels like the team needs you at obviously important times of the game.”
Beauvillier scored the first of his two career shorthanded goals in 2019-20 with the Islanders, and he added a second one last season, while playing here in Pittsburgh, where he averaged just 17 seconds a game in shorthanded ice time.
On Feb. 3 in Philadelphia, Beauvillier recorded the first shorthanded assist of his NHL career when he set up an Aliaksei Protas shorthanded goal.
“I think you’ve just got to wait for a certain break to come up, whether it's a loose puck or whether it's a battle you win,” says Beauvillier of knowing when to go and when to hold back offensively on the penalty kill. For me, at least, it has to be obvious; the puck is there and I have a chance to beat him 100 percent. If I'm 80 percent, maybe it's not the risk to take, and you’ve got to stay back and be a little bit more poised about your play.”
In the 16 games since the departure of Nic Dowd in a March 5 trade with Vegas, Beauvillier has assumed a larger portion of the PK responsibilities. He has averaged 2:09 in shorthanded ice time across that span, fourth highest among Washington forwards.
“He's done a real good job in the penalty kill overall,” says Carbery of Beauvillier. “I'm not selling Dowder short by saying this, but in his absence, we needed players to step up, and Anthony Beauvillier was right at the top of that list to get that opportunity to move into our top four killers, and he's done an excellent job, and the kill overall hasn't missed a beat.
“So, that's been a big part of us being able to stay in this race, is we've been able to win a few tight games, and it was clean slates or nothing given up on the penalty kill. And so that area of our game deserves a lot of credit for the last month of us being able to grind some wins out and be able to stay in this fight.”
Since Dowd’s departure, Washington’s penalty killing outfit has held its own, successfully snuffing out 85.4 percent of its shorthanded assignments and ranking fifth in the NHL.
In The Nets – Logan Thompson makes his 100th appearance in the Washington nets today in Pittsburgh, aiming for his 30th victory of the season. He comes into Saturday’s contest on the heels of a 21-save shutout performance on Wednesday night in Toronto in his most recent start.
Lifetime against the Penguins, Thompson is 3-1-0 in four appearances – all starts – with a 2.52 GAA and a .919 save pct.
For the Penguins, Arturs Silovs is Saturday’s starter. Acquired from Vancouver for a prospect and a pick last July, Silovs is now on the cusp of his first 20-win season in the NHL, entering today’s game with a 19-10-8 mark to show for his 37 appearances – all of them starts – with Pittsburgh this season.
The 25-year-old Latvian netminder is 1-0-0 in his lone career appearance against the Capitals. He stopped 27 of 30 shots he faced against the Caps in that Nov. 6 game earlier in the season, picking up the 5-3 victory in the process.
All Down The Line – Here’s how the Caps and the Penguins might look on Saturday afternoon in Pittsburgh:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 72-Beauvillier
21-A. Protas, 62-I. Protas, 43-Wilson
24-McMichael, 80-Dubois, 9-Leonard
22-Duhaime, 34-Sourdif, 63-Miroshnichenko
Defensemen
42-Fehervary, 38-Sandin
6-Chychrun, 57-van Riemsdyk
44-Hutson, 3-Roy
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
78-Gibson
Healthy Extras
27-Liljegren
29-Lapierre
47-Chisholm
52-McIlrath
53-Frank
64-Kampf
Injured/Out
79-Lindgren (upper body)
PITTSBURGH
Forwards
59-Chinakhov, 67-Rakell, 39-Mantha
25-Soderblom, 18-Novak, 16-Brazeau
15-Koppanen, 41-Koivunen, 2-McGroarty
55-Acciari, 13-K. Hayes, 85-A. Hayes
Defensemen
5-Shea, 75-Clifton
49-Girard, 3-St. Ivany
7-Solovyov, 27-Graves
Goalies
37-Silovs
74-Skinner
Healthy Extras
None
Injured/Out
17-Rust (lower body)
19-Dewar (lower body)
28-Wotherspoon (upper body)
46-Lizotte (upper body)
58-Letang (upper body)
65-Karlsson (lower body)
71-Malkin (upper body)
81-Kindel (upper body)
82-Jones (upper body)
87-Crosby (lower body)
