Slumping Capitals Looking for Answers 

With puck possession (Corsi) numbers at 55.54% and shot generation near the top of the league, you’d think the Capitals would be in fine form, but they simply can’t finish. Protas has been especially snake-bitten, with shots ringing off posts or being swallowed up by goaltenders when they might have been buried last season when he was shooting at 21%. 

Is this a correction for last season’s success – are the Capitals simply regressing back to the mean? Their success can be at least partially attributed to several players having career years in terms of offensive production, as well as those players staying relatively healthy over the course of the 2024-25 campaign. 

Special Teams Are Not So Special 

The Capitals’ power play ranks 27th in the NHL with a 15.2% success rate. As reported by Japers‘ Rink, in their eight losses this season, the Capitals have scored one goal in 26 power play opportunities for a 3.8% success rate. Their penalty kill percentage in the same losses was 65.5%, yielding 10 goals. With most of their games being close affairs, this would seemingly make all the difference in the world. 

Questions about the power play create a great deal of division among Capitals fans, some of whom are still remembering the golden days when the team was lethal on the man advantage. What once worked seems to have gone stale. Overloading the right side of the ice and leaving Ovechkin on an island worked when Nicklas Backstrom, one of the best half-wall quarterbacks in the game, was working down low and manipulating space to create lanes for his teammates. This scheme worked well, forcing teams to choose between certain death on either the right or left side – with Ovechkin a sure goal firing from his “office.”

This season, leaving the lethal shooting threats of Ovechkin and John Carlson at the point is great, that is until they make a weak lateral pass across the top of the zone or have to cover with speed as the last man back.  The team’s zone entries and puck retrievals, critical to gaining and maintaining offensive zone time on the power play, were automatic once – now, not so much. 

So how long will head coach Spencer Carbery stick with the same unit? He told The Hockey News, “We’ve thought about it, talked about it, looked at it and I’ll take responsibility, because I would completely understand if you sat here and go, ‘Why the heck would you go back with the same power-play unit that just rolled out there and looked the way it did in Buffalo?” That would be a fair assessment and question of our judgment and my judgment as the head coach of this hockey team.”

The Mushy Middle

With Dubois out of the lineup for the next three to four months, how do the Capitals adapt? With Strome locked in as the first-line center and Nic Dowd the perennial fourth-line pivot, Carbery has struggled with the second and third center positions. Connor McMichael, who has moved from center to wing and back has had a slow start to the season, recording only one goal thus far. Skilled and speedy Hendrix Lapierre, who hoped to finally stick with the club this season, has been inconsistent to start the campaign and has been the subject of trade rumors for the last few weeks. 

In a 3-2 loss against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Oct. 8, Carbery tried rookie Justin Sourdif, who has seen most of his action on the wing as a fourth-liner but who is a natural center, as the pivot on the third line. His line gave up the first goal of the game and saw only about 10 minutes in ice time. 

“We’re just trying to find the combination in our middle six,” Carbery said. “With Dubois out now, it’s just been a challenge, whether it’s (McMichael) in the middle, and Sourdif, (Lapierre). So we’re trying to figure out what that’s going to look like moving forward, whether Mikey can handle the Dubois sort of role, and what our third line looks like: is it Lappy? Is it Sourdif? How do we get Sourdif more involved and more impactful in a game? So those are things that we talk about and look at and dissect and make decisions.”

Some Bright Spots for the Capitals

Not all is doom and gloom in Washington. Wilson and Logan Thompson are off to great starts, and are making strong cases for why they should be included on Team Canada’s 2026 Olympic roster. Wilson leads the team in scoring and has been the only top-six forward who seems to be able to find the back of the net. Thompson has led the league in goals-against-average and save percentage, only allowing two or more goals in one game this season.

Ryan Leonard continues to look like he’ll be the player everyone thought he would; He has seven points in 15 games which ties him for sixth place in points for NHL rookies. Ethan Frank has looked impactful when called up from the Hershey Bears to serve on the fourth line, and Sourdif has shown good speed and energy, as well as the adaptability to move from wing to center when needed. 

The team’s defense corps has been solid, and with the help of Thompson’s exceptional play in net, has led the league with the fewest goals per game. Martin Fehervary and Matt Roy have been solid in their zone, bringing physicality and grit. Jakob Chychrun continues to impress in every game with his ability to jump into the offense, and Rasmus Sandin has had a point in each of his last three games. Even the much-maligned Carlson has four goals to start the season. 

Finally, Capitals fans had reason to smile on Nov. 5 as their team whipped up on the St. Louis Blues and goaltender Jordan Binnington in a 6-1 victory. Best of all, they watched as their captain scored his 900th-career goal, a feat few thought would ever happen in the NHL.