Feb. 27 vs. St. Louis Blues at Capital One Arena
Time: 7 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps Radio 24/7
St. Louis Blues (27-26-6)
Washington Capitals (38-12-8)
The Caps’ five-game homestand continues Thursday night when the St. Louis Blues come into town, providing the opposition for the middle match of the quintet. Washington has split the first two games, downing Edmonton on Sunday before falling 3-1 to the Calgary Flames on Tuesday.
Tuesday’s setback to Calgary halted Washington’s 16-game home point streak (11-0-5); it fell a game shy of the franchise standard of 17 straight home games without a point, established in 2016-17. The Caps also saw their overall point streak of eight straight games come to an end; it had been nearly a month between regulation setbacks for the Capitals.
Caps captain Alex Ovechkin continued his climb toward Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL goal record of 894 in Tuesday’s loss; he netted the 883rd goal of his career on a Washington power play in the third period, notching his 30th goal of the season in the process.
Ovechkin is now a dozen goals shy of breaking Gretzky’s hallowed mark, and he added to his own NHL record by recording his 19th season of 30 or more goals in his 20-year NHL career.
“He is one of a kind,” says longtime teammate Lars Eller of Ovechkin. “It’s inspiring to play with him and see what he is capable of doing, and it certainly gives the rest of the group something to look up to and inspires you, that at his age he is still capable of executing and scoring at the pace he is. It sets the bar high for the rest of us.”
After scoring a combined total of 15 goals in romps over Pittsburgh and Edmonton, respectively, in their first two games coming out of the NHL’s Four Nations break, the Caps found the going decidedly more difficult on Tuesday against the tight-checking Flames. Their start was lacking; Washington managed just five shots on net in the first frame and went nearly 11 minutes without one at one point.
Calgary took a 2-0 lead in the first, and despite their proclivity for coming back from deficits this season, the Caps weren’t able to dig out of that two-goal ditch against the stingy Flames.
“You’ve got to give these guys credit,” says Caps defenseman John Carlson of the Flames. “They have played us hard every single every game of my career. I feel like they've always had that really tough game, that really tough feel to them. And against this team, you're just not going to get controlled entries all the time, like maybe we want or like we're capable of normally. And that's the strength of their team, and I think we just forced too many pucks.
“We fed into that in the first [period] and then once we didn't, I felt like we played good and we controlled big portions of the second and third. But sometimes you're not going to score eight a night, and you can't afford to go in the hole.”
One of the primary hallmarks of the 2024-25 Capitals is the team’s ability to rebound from losses, which have been relatively few and far between. The Caps enter Thursday’s game with St. Louis with a 16-2-1 record in games immediately following losses this season.
“I think we’ll move past [Tuesday] as a one-off,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “It didn’t look like us in a bunch of different areas. You’re going to have some of those nights where the execution is off and the details were off. It felt like we got out-competed in certain areas and for certain stretches of that game, which is not like is. So that’s a one-off, and we’ll wash our hands of it and move on to St. Louis, but understand that we’re going to have to shore up those areas of our game and get back to what we were doing so well against Edmonton on home ice [Thursday] night.”
The Blues come to town on the heels of consecutive victories, but they’re still four points south of the playoff cutline in the Western Conference, and with three teams to climb over to get there.
Since the beginning of February, St. Louis has pulled at least a point from six of seven games (4-1-2) as it tries to make a late push toward the postseason. The Blues just wrapped up a six-game homestand in which they posted a respectable 3-1-2 mark. Following Thursday’s game in DC, they’ll head home to host Los Angeles before embarking on a six-game road trip. The Blues will be in Anaheim for the third of those six games when the March 7 NHL trade deadline rolls around.
