The Washington Capitals ended the Montreal Canadiens’ season with a 4-1 victory at Capital One Arena on Wednesday night, taking the first-round series four games to one. The Game 5 effort delivered the Capitals their first playoff series win since they defeated the Vegas Golden Knights in five games during the 2018 Stanley Cup Final.
Waiting for the Caps in the second round are the Carolina Hurricanes. The club’s Metropolitan Division rivals also moved on to the second round in just five games, putting the finishing touches on their series against the New Jersey Devils with a 5-4 double overtime win on Tuesday night.
The Capitals will have home-ice advantage, hosting the first two games of the series, after finishing atop the NHL’s Eastern Conference in the regular season with 111 standings points. The Hurricanes finished second in the Metro, 12 points behind the Caps.
The two teams split their regular-season series 2-2, which at times got incredibly heated. Carolina finished ahead in goal differential, outscoring the Capitals 14-11. The Capitals took the last game of the regular-season series 5-4 in a shootout on April 10.
From a process perspective, the Capitals struggled against the Hurricanes at five-on-five. In their four games, the Caps saw just 36.5 percent of shot attempts, 43.3 percent of expected goals, and 43 percent of scoring chances. However, they did own 53.7 percent of the high-danger chances, primarily due to their 17-7 advantage from the April 10 win.
“Obviously, we’re playing a real good opponent coming up next,” Dylan Strome said. “Going to be a totally different test with the way they play, but we’ll watch some video, we’ll study up, and we’ll be ready to go.
“Everyone kinda knows how they play,” he added later. “They dump a lot of pucks in, they don’t let you have a lot of zone time. We’re going to need to find a way to combat that. They’re a great team. We’ve had some pretty good games with them this year, some physical games, so I expect a little bit more of what we saw in this series. But it’s going to be huge to have the puck. We need the puck.”
The Hurricanes were far and away the NHL’s top five-on-five possession team, owning 59.5 percent of shot attempts during the regular season. They also finished with the top expected goals for percentage (56.3 percent), scoring chance for percentage (57.6 percent), and penalty-killing percentage (83.6 percent).
After the Capitals took down the Habs in the first round, the Hurricanes are one of only three teams (Red Wings, Panthers) in the East that the Caps have never defeated in a playoff series. They played Carolina in just one prior series, back in 2019, which saw the defending Cup champion Caps fall in seven games during the first round.
Sebastian Aho leads the Hurricanes in scoring, posting eight points (3g, 5a) in five games. Andrei Svechnikov, who took a one-punch KO in a fight with Alex Ovechkin during the 2019 series, led Carolina in goals with five. Starting goaltender Frederik Andersen suffered an undisclosed injury in Game 4 and was replaced in net by Pyotr Kochetkov for Game 5. He’s out day-to-day.
Strome recorded nine points (2g, 7a) in the Capitals’ first-round series against the Habs. Ovechkin led the team in goals with four, while Logan Thompson earned all four wins in the series despite an injury scare in Game 3 that saw him temporarily replaced by Charlie Lindgren.
The NHL has yet to release the full schedule for the series. as five of the league’s eight first-round series are still ongoing. All games moving forward will be on national TV.
