The Washington Capitals, losers of six of their last seven, will take on the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday at Lenovo Center. The matchup marks the third game of the Caps’ current four-game road trip, which will end Thursday against the Florida Panthers.
According to The Washington Post’s Bailey Johnson, the Capitals will go with virtually the same lineup as they did in their 3-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday, with the only change seeing Declan Chisholm coming in for Trevor van Riemsdyk. Logan Thompson will get his 11th start of the season.
Capitals’ projected lineup against Carolina, 11/11
Tuesday’s matchup against the Hurricanes will mark the first time the Capitals have played their Metropolitan Division rival since the Hurricanes ended their season in five games during the second round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs. They’ll also play against Nikolaj Ehlers, one of their main targets during free agency, for the first time in a Hurricanes jersey. Ehlers has 9 points (2g, 7a) in 15 games this season.
Carolina is off to another quick start this season, winning 11 of their first 15 games — good for second-best in the Eastern Conference with 22 standings points. Though the Hurricanes have also been weak on the power play (tied for 29th in the league at 14.0%), they’ve won five of their first six games at home, with their only loss coming in a 6-3 defeat to the Vegas Golden Knights on October 28. Their goal differential of plus-17 this season is the best mark in the Eastern Conference, seven better than second-place Montreal Canadiens at plus-10.
Carolina is also winners of their last four games, outscoring their opponents 18 to 10 during that stretch.
“Their whole roster is built on speed, they all can skate,” Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery explained. “That just goes directly in line with how they pressure the puck all over the ice, so it’s a five-man pressure every single zone, and they have a lot of confidence in that, and they play very, very connected. They can be that aggressive because they have so much confidence in their skating ability to be able to recover, even if you get them in a vulnerable spot. They just are so quick to recover from the other four guys on the ice — yeah, they’ve done a good job of it.”
As the Hurricanes have found their top form, the Capitals have struggled to score and cope with the loss of second-line centerman Pierre-Luc Dubois, who will miss most of the season due to surgery on his abdominal and adductor muscles. Despite being better analytically this season than they were during the 2024-25 campaign, the Capitals are near the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings due to their struggles finishing and weak special teams. Their 42 goals scored rank fifth-worst in the NHL this season.
Carbery is going to give his forward lines another opportunity to play out of their current slump, but again reiterated that his patience is running thin.
“It’s a fine line, right?” he said. “Do you stay with trying to create chemistry and continuity, and let them work through the growing pains, or is it time to change it, change it, change it, and then you change it, then the complaint will be, ‘We can’t generate any chemistry because it’s changed so quickly.’ So I think that’s a feel thing as coaches – it’s no different than five-on-five lines and moving guys around, as you have to be careful how much you do that because you want to give — whether it’s line combinations (or) power play groups, opportunities to create chemistry. Sometimes that’s working through some adversity, or quote unquote bad times, before it gets good. So, we’ve moved the units around a little bit, we’ve stayed with them at certain points, and feel like right now we’re trying to prioritize the chemistry part, but definitely acknowledge there’s a fine line to that before you need to make changes.”
The Hurricanes will be without defensemen Jalen Chatfield and Jaccob Slavin due to injury. Chatfield got hurt on November 6 against the Minnesota Wild after taking a headshot from Tyler Pitlick.
Hurricanes’ projected lineup (via @RyanHenkel_)
Puck drop for tonight’s matchup will be at 7 pm. The Capitals and Hurricanes split last year’s regular-season series 2-2-0, with the home team winning each of the games.
