Capitals' Surprising Season Ends in Familiar Disappointment

The Washington Capitals' 2024-25 season was a magical one in so many ways. They unexpectedly returned to the top of the Eastern Conference standings, numerous players had career years, and of course, Alex Ovechkin broke Wayne Gretzky's all-time goals record.

Unfortunately for them, that magic didn't continue into the playoffs.

Washington was eliminated from the postseason following a 3-1 home loss to the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 5 on Thursday. It's yet another second-round loss for the Capitals, who have only made it past that point once in Ovechkin's 20 seasons with the team. They won the Stanley Cup on that one occasion in 2018, but with a generational talent in Ovechkin and several other outstanding players over the years, it's hard not to feel a sense of disappointment.

It doesn't take a detective to figure out why the Capitals lost this series: they simply couldn't score. They scored just seven goals throughout the five-game series, only four of which came at 5-on-5. Furthermore, they only averaged 19.2 shots on goal per game, so they just could not figure out the Hurricanes' defensive system.

Carolina also proved to be a far deeper team than Washington throughout the series. The Hurricanes had 11 different goal scorers, with Seth Jarvis and Shayne Gotsisbehere scoring two each while Andrei Svechnikov scored three, and that doesn't even include Sebastian Aho. Meanwhile, Washington only had seven different goal scorers, none of whom had multiple goals.

While some want to point the finger at goaltender Logan Thompson, especially after allowing Svechnikov to score the series-winning goal from the corner on Thursday, he still had a very solid .911 save percentage. The truth is that the Capitals completely failed to give him any run support, as shown by his counterpart in Frederik Anderson boasting a .937 save percentage.

How sustainable the Capitals' success is remains to be seen, especially with Ovechkin turning 40 before the start of next season. However, it's hard not to feel bitter disappointment at this result.

“It’s awful because you did feel this team was capable of doing something special and potentially going to the Cup finals and making some noise,” head coach Spencer Carbery said. “We knew we had our work out for us. We knew it wasn’t going to be smooth sailing through this, but we believed. … And I’ll just speak for myself, this is one of the greatest seasons that I’ve ever been a part of as a coach or a player and I’ll never forget this group. I told those guys I love them.

“Every single one of them, what we went through as a group this year and what they accomplished and ‘O’s’ record and everything that went into this season, I will never forget this group. Really, really memorable year.”