React, Respond – Heading into Game 4 of their second-round Stanley Cup playoff series with the Carolina Hurricanes tonight in Raleigh, the Caps find themselves in a familiar position. After falling 4-0 in Game 3 here on Saturday, the Caps are down 2-1 in the series, and they’re again in need of a bounce back performance tonight to avoid falling into a 3-1 series deficit.
Over the course of the regular season and the playoffs to date, the Caps are 25-7-1 in games following a loss this season, and they’re 2-0 in games after a loss in the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs.
As was the case in their-first round series with Montreal, the Caps have improved with each game of the series, and they’ll need to continue that trend in tonight’s Game 4. They played a strong first half of Game 3 before the Canes broke the contest open with a pair of goals late in the second and two more in the third in a 4-0 victory.
“I think it should give our guys a lot of confidence – especially in this building – of being able to control play and frustrate them, take it to them and generate a bunch of good looks,” says Caps coach Spener Carbery. “I’ve always appreciated the fact that our guys are a confident group, and they feel like in any environment against any team on any given night, we absolutely can beat anyone in this League. And we’ve shown that all year long.
“And [Saturday] night, all the narrative of us struggling against Carolina in their building, all the noise and everything that goes into it, they win the game, but there’s a lot of positives that I know our group would take out of it of being able to be right there with them, or a couple of bounces away – special teams, all that stuff. But we have a confident group.”
The Caps didn’t really hit their full stride until late in Game 4 in their first-round series with the Canadiens, but once they did, they never looked back. This is a different series with a different opponent, but it’s also a divisional opponent they’re familiar with.
“We knew it was going to be a tough series; they played us tough all year,” says Caps center Dylan Strome. “We won two at home in the regular season and they won two in their home in the regular season. And obviously they found a way to get one on us on our home ice in the playoffs, so it’s our job to get one back here. You feel like you always need a split when you go on the road in the playoffs, and tonight’s our night to do that.”
“I felt like we came in here with the attitude like we were down 2-0 in games, and we were going in with the urgency and desperation more than them,” says Caps center Lars Eller. “There were definitely some good things we’re going to take with us, and then there are a couple of things we need to do a little bit better to get us over the edge. But we have the belief.”
Even Flow – Roughly midway through the second round of the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs, the Caps have yielded the second fewest goals against (19) of any of the eight remaining teams in the postseason. Unfortunately for Washington, the Caps’ second-round opponent is the only team that has surrendered fewer goals against (15) than themselves.
Both the Caps and the Canes are eight games deep into the playoffs, and the Caps are still the team with the fewest goals yielded at 5-on-5 (11; Carolina has been dented for a dozen).
During the regular season, the Caps’ rate of 3.49 goals per game – at all strengths – ranked second only to Tampa Bay. Washington’s total of 190 regular season goals at 5-on-5 was also second most in the NHL during the regular season; only Columbus (201) had more
After scoring 11 goals at 5-on-5 in the first round, the Caps have been limited to just two tallies at 5-on-5 in this series.
“There isn’t a lot of time and space, so a lot of times it maybe doesn’t come down to skill as much as execution around the net,” says Eller. “And I just think the more we can do the things we’ve been doing the last couple of games, the more we can do that, and we will get rewarded for it eventually. And the longer we can keep that going, the more we stack the chances and the probability of scoring and winning a game.
“It’s going to get there eventually; that’s what we believe, and I’ve seen it many times before. So we just focus on us and what we need to do. And if we are a little bit better in a couple of areas, I think we can get there because I’ve seen it throughout the year. We can put ourselves in a position to win tonight, and then we’ll go from there.”
With 24.4 shots per game in the playoffs, Caps are lowest among the remaining teams. And with 2.75 goals per game, they also rank lowest among remaining teams.
“We’ve been a pretty good shot volume team all year, and through three games, we haven’t had that,” says Strome. “I think sometimes when you’re getting five or six chances a game, it can become a little easier to bear down and put them in, as opposed to when you’re getting two or three.
“But I think through three games, we’re realizing what it’s going to be like in this series to get goals and to find ways to score. It’s about us just bearing down and finishing our chances, and driving the net hard and making it difficult on them. We didn’t have nearly enough shots with traffic last game, or to make it tough on him. He’s a great goalie and he has like a .950 [save pct.] or something in the playoffs.
“We’ve got to find a way to get to him, get to the net, create, make it difficult on him. Get in front, make some screens and find ways.”
More alarmingly, virtually all of their offensive metrics are lower in this series than in the first round against the Canadiens. Carbery was asked after Monday’s morning skate of his team has done enough to make Frederik Andersen’s life difficult in the Carolina crease.
“Nope, but I also think it’s been tight for both teams, so there’s not a lot either way,” says Carbery. “I think at certain points of the series we’ve done a good job of creating looks and some high danger opportunities. But I will say this: like I said, it’s been tough sledding both ways. So it’s going to be one of those series where it’s just hard to generate high danger, quality looks.
“And we just have to try to create more and try to make it more difficult on him with those looks, second looks, third looks, fourth looks, a few more a game. When the margins are this thin, it’s only a couple more a game. You don’t need to change your whole game plan and go from 10 high danger chances to 20. It's can you go from 10 to 13? Three more, and that could be the difference in a game.”
Again, the Caps have progressed in each of the first three games of the series, and they can’t afford for any of the aspects of their game to suffer any level of significant backsliding tonight if they hope to square the series.
“We have to build on the things that we've done well over games one, two and three,” says Caps center Nic Dowd. “I think we have gotten better. We made some adjustments and so have they; that's just the cat and mouse game of a seven-game series. But I think we need to continue with what we've built on, and we have to get better at that and continue to move forward. And I think our special teams have to take a step forward as well.”
Dowd is correct; the Caps have been a bit wobbly in this postseason has been on special teams.
The Caps’ power play unit has scored four goals in eight games, fewest of the eight remaining teams in the postseason. And Washington’s penalty killing outfit has been nicked for at least one goal against in five of those eight games while giving up multiple power-play goals against in three of the eight games, including Saturday’s Game 3 here in Raleigh.
Washington’s power play clicked at a rate of 23.5 percent during the regular season, 14th in the League. The Caps boasted the fifth best penalty killing outfit during the regular season at 82 percent. They’ve not been able to approach their regular season levels with either of their special teams to this point of the playoffs.
Meanwhile, Carolina leads the entire field of 16 playoff entrants with a gaudy 33.3 percent success rate on the power play and a near perfect 95.5 percent kill rate. John Carlson’s power-play game-winner in Game 2 is the only blemish on Carolina’s penalty killing crew in eight games.
Only Edmonton has given up more power play goals than the Capitals and only the Oilers (62.1 percent) have a lower kill rate than Washington’s 65.2 percent.
Until they’re able to shore up their special teams performance, it’s imperative for the Caps to remain stingy at 5-on-5 and to limit their trips to the penalty box. And as mentioned above, they’ve got to find a way to generate, create and especially to finish some scoring chances at evens.
“Belief is one, and urgency,” says Eller, asked what elements are needed for the Caps to even the series tonight. “Urgency and desperation. I actually do think we have gotten better game by game, and that’s the general feeling. The score of last game maybe doesn’t reflect that, but the first 40 minutes of the game I think may be the best of the series for us. And I think it actually fuels the belief that we have everything we need to be able to win the next game.”
In The Nets – Like the team in front of him, Logan Thompson looks to bounce back from a loss tonight. Throughout the regular season, he has also been effective at bouncing back from the occasional bad beat.
During the course of the 2024-25 regular season and the subsequent playoffs, Thompson has been reached for four or more goals against on 10 occasions in 51 appearances. In his starts immediately following those 10 games, he is 8-1-1 with a 2.34 GAA and a .918 save pct.
“I’ve said it a million times; he’s a competitor and he wants to win more desperately than anybody we have,” says Carbery of his goaltender. “You know what you’re going to get every single time from him, whether it’s coming off a loss or whatever the situation. You know exactly what competitive level [to expect] and he’s going to fight [Monday] night.”
When Andersen blanked the Caps on 21 shots in Game 3, he became the 10th goaltender in NHL history to record a Stanley Cup playoffs shutout for three different teams. The 35-year-old Danish netminder has also produced postseason clean sheets for Anaheim and Toronto.
During Andersen’s days with Toronto, the Caps ousted him and the Leafs from the first round of the playoffs in a six-game set in 2017, with five of those games going to overtime. Four Capitals have notched multiple postseason goals against Andersen: P-L Dubois, Alex Ovechkin and Tom Wilson have three each while John Carlson has two.
“You have to beat him with quality,” says fellow Denmark native Eller of Andersen. “Last game, I thought he had a really strong game. The shot location has to be good, and you have to get him moving. And sometimes you need second chances and third chances to do that. We need bodies in front of him, and we need the puck arriving in timely fashion with the bodies in front of him. If we are able to get those two things in sync, I think we’re going to be able to get goals.”
All Lined Up – Here’s how the Capitals and the Hurricanes might look for Monday night’s Game 4 of the second-round playoff series between the two teams:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 21-Protas
24-McMichael, 80-Dubois, 43-Wilson
88-Mangiapane, 20-Eller, 9-Leonard
22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 72-Beauvillier
Defensemen
38-Sandin, 74-Carlson
6-Chychrun, 3-Roy
27-Alexeyev, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Extras
16-Raddysh
25-Bear
52-McIlrath
53-Frank
78-Gibson
Out/Injured
15-Milano (upper body)
19-Backstrom (hip)
42-Fehervary (lower body)
77-Oshie (back)
CAROLINA
Forwards
37-Svechnikov, 20-Aho, 24-Jarvis
71-Hall, 96-Roslovic, 22-Stankoven
48-Martinook, 11-Staal, 24-Jarvis
50-Robinson, 82-Kotkaniemi, 53-Blake
Defensemen
74-Slavin, 8-Burns
7-Orlov, 5-Chatfield
4-Gostisbehere, 26-Walker
Goaltenders
31-Andersen
52-Kochetkov
Extras
21-Nikishin
27-Jost
41-Martin
42-Smith
54-Jaaska
56-Morrow
61-Stillman
80-Khazheyev
Out/Injured
71-Fast (upper body)
77-Jankowski (undisclosed)
