March 1 vs. Tampa Bay Lightning at Capital One Arena
Time: 12:30 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps Radio 24/7
Tampa Bay Lightning (34-20-4)
Washington Capitals (38-13-8)
The Caps move into the back half of their season-long five-game homestand and kick off the March portion of their schedule on Saturday when they host the Tampa Bay Lightning in a matinee match at Capital One Arena.
For the first time in over two months – since Dec. 20 – and for just the third time all season, the Caps are going into Saturday’s game lugging a modest two-game regulation losing streak, matching their longest of the season to date.
Since handing the Edmonton Oilers a 7-3 drubbing on Sunday afternoon in the homestand opener, the Caps have dropped a pair of games to Western Conference opponents who are on the outskirts of the playoff hunt. Calgary prevailed 3-1 here on Tuesday, and St. Louis handed the Capitals a 5-2 defeat on Thursday night.
Thursday’s loss was just the third the Caps have suffered by a margin of three or more goals this season; Washington has the fewest such losses in the League this season. The Caps have yet to lose by a margin of more than three goals this season, and two of the three losses by three were achieved with an empty-net goal by the opposition.
On the flipside of that coin, the Caps have now yielded three or more goals against in nine straight games, doing so for the first time since a nine-game run from March 18-April 9, 2022. When they keep the opposition to two or fewer goals against this season, the Capitals are 26-2-1. When they’re dented for three or more goals against, they slip to 12-11-7.
The Caps have started slowly these last two games, falling behind in each of them. Washington has thrived while playing from in front this season; its total of 1432 minutes and 21 seconds of lead time this season is third in the League, trailing only Winnipeg and Tampa Bay. The Jets have played one more game and the Lightning has played one game fewer than the Capitals to this point of the season.
Washington roared back from a 13-day break for the 4 Nations Face-Off with consecutive lopsided wins over Pittsburgh and Edmonton last weekend, scoring 15 goals in a span of 24 hours in the process. The Sunday game against Edmonton produced one of the Caps’ best all-around, 60-minute efforts of the season. But they’ve looked a bit out of sorts, a bit disconnected since, and they’ve only scored three goals in the successive setbacks.
“I think the past two games, coming back from the break, you expect that from your first two games, not necessarily the third and fourth,” says Caps center P-L Dubois, who was one of his team’s best players in Thursday’s loss. “There are opportunities there tonight where maybe the pass isn’t on the tape, that last play or the last shot, little things like that, just little details that mean a lot in the outcome of the game.
“There are times to keep it simple, and there are times you can make plays. I think that's why we've been successful this year; we've been able to gauge when to make a play and when there's nothing, there's nothing. I think it's finding that balance of you never want to over-complicate it, but sometimes there's plays to be made. Carrying a puck over the blue line has a pretty significant difference to score a goal in next 10-15 seconds than chipping it in or dumping it in.
“We have a lot of talent this team, and we’ve found the balance all year. These last two games are obviously not what you want, but it's a long season. You're not going to play your best all the time.”
As the Caps try to steer out of their short tailspin, they’ll be facing the League’s hottest team in the Lightning. Tampa Bay comes to town with a seven-game winning streak – the longest current streak in the NHL – and it has outscored the opposition by a combined total of 31-12 in those seven contests. And Washington will certainly need to muster a more assertive start against Tampa Bay; the Lightning carries a plus-21 (62-41) first-period goal differential in 58 games this season.
Most recently, the Bolts blanked Calgary by a 3-0 count Thursday night to conclude the sweep of a three-game homestand. Although the Lightning is in third place in the Atlantic Division standings, it trails frontrunning Florida by only three points, and it holds two games in hand on the Panthers as well. The Bolts travel to Florida following Saturday’s game with the Caps; they face the Panthers on Monday in Sunrise.
Tampa Bay blanked the Caps 3-0 in Tampa on Oct. 26 in Washington’s lone shutout loss of the season to date. That early-season loss to the Lightning was the first of the three losses by three or more goals for the Caps in 2024-25, and it is the only one of the three in which the opponent didn’t score a late empty-netter. On Nov. 27, the Caps won a wild one over the Lightning in Tampa, coming back in the third period on goals from John Carlson and Tom Wilson, and shaking off an inadvertent own goal from goalie Charlie Lindgren in the third period.
“They’re a very good team,” says Caps center Dylan Strome of the Lightning. “We beat them once in their rink, and they beat us once in their rink. I thought we had a really, really good game when we played there – the second game of the dads’ trip – and found a way to come back and bail out Chucky there after that goal.
“Hopefully, we can find a way to just do what we did that game. I thought we limited their top line to a limited number of chances. They’re a great team. They have great players. They have really good offensive skill, and they’ve got a great goalie. Obviously losing two in a row is never good, and we haven’t lost three in a row, so hopefully we can keep that going.”
