ARLINGTON, VA — The Washington Capitals left the rink on Thursday pondering the what-ifs.
Players had gotten the news that morning that the team was dealing Nic Dowd to the Vegas Golden Knights, ending his eight-season tenure in DC and leaving a hole in the locker room.
The Caps knew trades could be coming — Washington sits four points behind the Boston Bruins for a playoff spot with three more games played — but when faced with the reality of it, they couldn’t help but wonder what they could have done to keep him.
“One of my first thoughts, coming in this morning when I heard the news, was, ‘What if we won against Utah? Would it have been different?’” said Hendrix Lapierre.
Lapierre himself nearly tied that game against the Utah Mammoth on Tuesday, flying into the offensive zone before launching a shot from the slot, but goaltender Karel Vejmelka made the save. The weight of that missed opportunity felt heavier in Dowd’s absence.
“What if I scored?” Lapierre said. “Maybe the decision was already done. But when you lose a friend like that, it makes you rethink a couple of things.”
When asked about Lapierre’s comments, head coach Spencer Carbery grimaced, visibly emotional.
“God, that tugged a little bit,” he said, rapping his knuckles against the podium. “I don’t know. I haven’t gone there…It’s a tough day.”
Tuesday’s loss didn’t stand alone, of course, merely the last misstep in a season that’s failed to live up to the Cinderella story that saw the Capitals win the Eastern Conference in 2024-25. Many of Washington’s players (including, it should be said, Dowd himself) have taken a step back after career seasons, and what had been a cakewalk to the playoffs last year has become a shaky hope.
Until Thursday, Dowd was the fourth longest-tenured Capitals player, signing in DC the season after the 2018 Stanley Cup championship. He became a staple of Washington’s fourth line — a trusted defensive forward who was a constant factor between a series of rotating wingers — and a key part of the penalty kill. He spent part of this season on the third line but maintained a defense-heavy workload, starting just 15 percent of his shifts in the offensive zone.
Dowd has never hit the 30-point mark, recording a career-high 27 points (14g, 13a) in 2024-25 and scoring 16 points (4g, 12a) this season, and he was far from a flashy star player. But he excelled in an unglamorous job. Carbery recounted a conversation he’d had with Dowd after Alex Ovechkin broke the all-time goals record last April.
“I said, ‘Dowder, when your career is over, you’re going to be able to reflect — and probably no one will talk about it — but you deserve a lot of credit for O’s record and what you did for him,” Carbery said. “’And you might go, ‘Why?’ You started 275 times in the defensive zone so Alex Ovechkin could start in the offensive zone tenfold.
“’And think of how many goals were scored because of that, because this team and this organization was able to deploy you in the defensive zone consistently and give you a tough Auston Matthews matchup or Jack Eichel matchup. And you not only flourished in that matchup and did such a good job, but you loved it and embraced it and didn’t complain and didn’t say one iota about not starting or getting an opportunity to start in the offensive zone.’”
But while the Capitals spoke highly of Dowd’s play, his presence off the ice was just as memorable. He became a mentor to many of his teammates, including up-and-coming players on his line, and served as Washington’s alternate captain when John Carlson or Tom Wilson were out injured.
“If I had to look back right now and say, ‘Okay, who’s helped me the most in my start to the NHL, my first 150 games?’ Dowder would be up there, for sure,” Lapierre said. “He’s a center like me, and he’s shown me a bunch, whether it’s on face-offs, positioning, just a way to approach the game. He’s a true professional…
“He’s just helped me tremendously, just becoming a better person, a better pro. It’s tough to pinpoint one thing, but just the small details in the game. And he doesn’t even need to talk to me. Just me looking at him and seeing what he does on a daily basis, it’s kind of like, ‘Okay, that’s enough for me to learn.’”
Pierre-Luc Dubois, who’s flourished in Washington after rocky tenures in Columbus, Winnipeg, and LA, noted that Dowd was one of the first to call him when the Capitals traded for him in June 2024.
“I think I speak for everybody here when I say he’s one of the best teammates that you could ask for,” Dubois said. “There’s Nic Dowd, the player, that’s going to be missed, but there’s also Nic Dowd, the person, that you can’t really put value on that, that’s going to be missed in this dressing room.”
“He just exemplifies exactly what a leader is and what a teammate is, a father, a husband,” Brandon Duhaime added. “He checks all the boxes, and what a privilege it was, to be able to take the ice with him.”
No one has been on Dowd’s wing more in recent years than Duhaime, who clocked more than 1,300 minutes of ice time with Dowd since joining the Capitals last season. Duhaime, 28, already had three NHL seasons under his belt when he came to DC, but his time playing with Dowd proved a valuable learning experience.
“I could talk your ear off all day on what he taught me,” Duhaime said. “He worried about his own game, but as much as he worried about himself, he helped me along the way, whether it was little things and little plays and areas that I can improve on, or praising me for something little that I did, or building guys up. He’s just an incredible leader.”
With little room for error in the hunt for a playoff spot, the Capitals won’t have long to process Dowd’s loss, either on the ice as a key defensive player or off the ice as a leader and friend. They’ll face the Boston Bruins in a critical matchup on Saturday and have just 19 games left in the regular season, including one against Dowd and the Golden Knights on March 28.
“That’s the sh***y part of this business,” Dubois said. “We have to be able to shift that focus on this game on Saturday, because we’re still in the playoff race. We still have a shot. And you never know when it’s going to be your year, and you never want to just waste a year and lose a game because you’re not fully focused. So for us, [we need to] turn the page quick and get ready for another game.”
The Capitals, rumored to be interested in both buying and selling, will have just under a day to explore more potential deals before Friday’s 3 pm trade deadline.
