April 13 vs. Columbus Blue Jackets at Capital One Arena
Time: 6:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps Radio 24/7
Columbus Blue Jackets (37-33-9)
Washington Capitals (50-20-9)
The Caps conclude a set of home-and-home back-to-back games against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Sunday evening in DC. The set started inauspiciously for Washington on Saturday in Ohio’s capital city, where the Caps found themselves on the wrong end of a 7-0 barrage.
Saturday’s game fell apart on the Caps early; they were down 2-0 before the five-minute mark of the first period and were limited to 22 shots on net, half of which came in the third period. Bad beats have been extremely rare for Washington this season; the Caps have been competitive in virtually every game. Saturday was contest No. 79 for Washington, and it marked just the second time all season the Caps have trailed by as many as four goals.
Alex Ovechkin didn’t play in Saturday’s game, and the Caps were also without Jakob Chychrun (illness) for a second straight game. Ovechkin is expected to be in the lineup on Sunday.
Saturday’s shutout setback is just the third suffered by the Caps this season. The shutout goal differential is the worst suffered by the Caps since Dec. 12, 2010 when they lost by the same score to the Rangers at Madison Square Garden under the harsh lights of the “Road To The Winter Classic” documentary series.
That game nearly a decade and a half ago featured Ovechkin’s most recent regular season fight, when he dropped the gloves with the Blueshirts’ Brandon Dubinsky. Dubinsky had a Gordie Howe hat trick in that 2010 game; Columbus winger James van Riemsdyk had the second Gordie Howe hat trick of his career in Saturday’s game.
(Jackets bench boss Dean Evason is the connective tissue here; he was a Washington assistant coach with the Caps in 2010.)
After starting that season on an 18-6-2 spree, the 2010-11 Caps fell on hard times in December as the 2011 Winter Classic against the Penguins approached. The loss to the Rangers extended Washington’s slide to six straight games (0-5-1) in a six that would stretch to eight (0-6-2) before the Caps could right the ship.
This year’s model of the Caps finds itself in similar – but not as dire – straits, albeit at a distinctly different time of the season. Washington has already clinched the Metropolitan Division crown and the top spot in the Eastern Conference standings, and a week ago on Long Island, Ovechkin completed the chase to topple Wayne Gretzky from atop the NHL’s all-time goals ledger.
With three games remaining in the regular season – all against Metropolitan Division rivals – the Caps are still seeking to restore the luster of the team’s collective midseason game before the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs get underway next weekend.
Upon completion of its last multi-game homestand on March 22, the Caps owned the NHL’s best record with a dozen games remaining. But they’ve wobbled their way to a 3-5-1 mark in the first nine of those last 12 contests of the campaign, in what is easily their longest stretch of the season without being able to stack up consecutive victories.
Saturday’s game extended another growing concern; the Caps have now yielded three or more goals against in 10 straight games, and they’ve done so for the second time since the calendar flipped to 2025. Washington was also dented for three or more goals against in 11 straight games (5-3-3) from Jan. 30-March 3 of this year, the longest streak of its kind for the team in three and a half decades.
“You want to feel good about your game going into the playoffs,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “And that’s not just as a team, that’s individually. So, all of a sudden, when you’re constantly getting scored on, you’re not able to generate anything, you’re not obviously getting shots, scoring, finishing, spending time in the offensive zone. And you start to lose confidence, and you start to fight it a bit.
“Now, hopefully we have a mature enough group that can flip that quickly, but you do worry about those things. And that’s why ideally – in an ideal scenario – you want to be playing well and [have] guys playing at the top of their game going into the playoffs. But it is what it is; we understand where we’re at. We’ll regroup and get ready for [Sunday’s game].”
Part of the hockey player brand is an eagerness to atone for the odd bad game or bad shift, and the sooner the better. So, it’s a good thing the Caps will get back on the ice Sunday for their home regular season finale and give it another go, and against the same team, to boot.
“Yeah, absolutely,” says Caps defenseman John Carlson. “At this time of the year, there’s no time to think about anything but getting better, and that’s what we’ll be doing.”
The Jackets’ offensive outburst on Saturday was no anomaly; it marked the fifth time this season Columbus has erupted for as many as seven goals in a game. That ties the Jackets with a trio of teams – Buffalo, Los Angeles and Tampa Bay – for the second-most seven-goal games this season; only the Capitals (six) have more.
The first of Washington’s half dozen offensive outbursts of that magnitude took place here on Nov. 2, and it came at the Blue Jackets’ expense in Saturday matinee at Capital One Arena. The Caps rode a five-goal first period to a 7-2 win over the Jackets that afternoon in the first of four meetings between the two Metro rivals this season.
Columbus’ lopsided win on Saturday enabled it to keep its faint playoff hopes alive for another day. And not only that, but the Jackets got a touch of help – though not as much as they could have had – later Saturday in the form of a much tighter shutout victory elsewhere around the circuit.
Toronto’s Anthony Stolarz needed to make only 15 saves to help the Leafs overcome a 34-save effort from Montreal rookie Jakub Dobes in a 1-0 Maple Leafs win on Saturday night in Toronto. But Mitch Marner’s game-winner didn’t come until the first minute of overtime, so the Habs collected a point.
Montreal has 88 points with two games remaining; Columbus has 83 with three games – including Sunday’s – left on the schedule. Montreal holds the tiebreaker, so the Jackets’ singular path to the postseason requires them to win all three remaining games (at Washington, at Philadelphia and at home against the Islanders, respectively) while Montreal drops its last two games in regulation (both at home, against Chicago and Carolina, respectively).
