The Washington Capitals open the 2025-26 NHL season on home ice against the Boston Bruins, Wednesday night. The team enters the season off the back of a 111-point 2024-25 campaign that saw them finish atop the Eastern Conference.
After winning their first playoff series since their 2018 Stanley Cup victory, the Capitals were then eliminated in the second round by the Carolina Hurricanes in just five games. They entered the offseason looking to make slight tweaks to their roster to ensure their regular-season success was no fluke and to present a more formidable playoff challenge to the top teams in their conference.
Here’s an overview of some of the top storylines from over the summer into training camp if you tuned out until now.
The Capitals made just two notable additions to their roster, and both came via trade.
While the Capitals attempted to play a significant role in the free agency market, most notably through star winger Nikolaj Ehlers, they ultimately fell short of making any sizable additions to their roster from last season. The only players they did end up adding came via trade, and in the form of winger Justin Sourdif and defenseman Declan Chisholm.
Sourdif, 23, will start the season as Taylor Raddysh’s replacement on the club’s fourth line with Nic Dowd and Brandon Duhaime. The Capitals acquired him from the Florida Panthers in a June trade that saw a 2026 second-round pick and a 2027 sixth-round pick sent back to Florida.
The Capitals then signed the former third-round pick of the Panthers to a two-year, $1.65 million contract days later. Sourdif has played in just four career NHL games, scoring his first NHL goal with the Panthers last year.
Chisholm, 25, is a left-handed defenseman acquired by the Capitals at the 2025 NHL draft from the Minnesota Wild. The Caps, who also received a sixth-round pick in the deal, dealt defender Chase Priskie and a fourth-round pick back to Minnesota.
The Ontario native will likely be the team’s seventh defenseman for the season and will be a healthy scratch against the Bruins.
Alex Ovechkin had another busy summer.
Over the offseason, Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin stayed busy, taking his now annual vacation in Turkey and returning to his native Russia, where he made numerous charity and media appearances.
Some of his top headlines include:
- Alex Ovechkin has goat encounter on first day of his summer vacation
- Alex Ovechkin scores goal as NHL All-Stars rout KHL stars 15-3 in annual “Match of the Year” charity game
- Alex Ovechkin wins ESPY award for Best Record-Breaking Performance: “We accomplish something special this season, and we did it together”
- Alex Ovechkin indicates he will play out all of next season with Capitals before making decision on future of NHL career: “A year will pass and we will think about it”
- Alex Ovechkin argues with referees to give him an assist and threatens to hit Nail Yakupov while mic’d up during “Match of the Year”
- Alex Ovechkin on what he wants to achieve with Capitals during 2025-26 season: “To play well and try to win the Stanley Cup”
- Alex Ovechkin celebrated by Dynamo Moscow for breaking NHL’s all-time goals record with ceremonial banner raising and golden stick
- Alex Ovechkin scores between-the-legs breakaway goal, nets hat trick in Pavel Datsyuk’s farewell “Magic Game”
Ovechkin returned to the DC area in early September and immediately joined his teammates for informal skates at MedStar Capitals Iceplex. He then released a new cereal entitled Ovi’s Great Crunch at Giant grocery stores, celebrated his 40th birthday, spoke more about his NHL future, and suffered a lower-body injury on the first day of training camp.
After missing the first four games of the preseason, Ovechkin returned to the team’s lineup to play in the final two exhibition games left on the club’s schedule.
Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery admitted Ovechkin’s preseason, where he put up no points, was hard to evaluate, but he said he had “the utmost confidence that he’ll be ready to go” tonight against the Bruins.
To start the year, Ovechkin will skate on the right wing of the Capitals’ top line with Dylan Strome and Aliaksei Protas.
Spencer Carbery won the Jack Adams Award as NHL Coach of the Year.
For his efforts in helping the Capitals to their 51-22-9 record, head coach Spencer Carbery beat out the Winnipeg Jets’ Scott Arniel and the Montreal Canadiens’ Martin St. Louis to take home the Jack Adams Award as NHL Coach of the Year.
In doing so, Carbery became the first bench boss to ever win Coach of the Year in the NHL, AHL, and ECHL — all three of North America’s top professional leagues. Carbery was the sixth Capitals head coach since the award was first instituted in 1973-74 to be named a finalist and the first since Barry Trotz (2016) to win it.
The Capitals scored 70 more goals and allowed 23 fewer goals in Carbery’s second season with the team, improving their goal differential from minus-36 to plus-57, a 93-goal jump in just one year. They also accumulated 20 more standings points, becoming the first team to qualify for the playoffs after sneaking into the final spot in 2023-24.
Carbery garnered 81 of the possible 103 first-place votes, finishing 215 points ahead of Arniel for first place. He was only left off one ballot.
Hendrix Lapierre is back and in a big way.
The Capitals came into training camp fully expecting to move Connor McMichael back to his natural center position, replacing veteran Lars Eller after he left the team in free agency. However, 2020 first-round pick Hendrix Lapierre forced them into a change of plans.
Lapierre played in five preseason games, tied for the most on the team, and tallied a league-leading seven points (1g, 6a), a far cry from his subpar showing at last year’s camp. The brilliant performance not only put him back into the discussion of making the Capitals’ roster again but also directly into their Opening Night lineup.
Heading into Wednesday night, Lapierre has been skating with Anthony Beauvillier and Ryan Leonard on the Capitals’ third line. Connor McMichael, who had a career-best 57 points (26g, 31a) as a winger last year, has been moved back onto the second line as the left wing of a trio also featuring Pierre-Luc Dubois and Tom Wilson.
“My confidence level in [Lapierre] playing the middle and potentially earning that third-line center role has made us consider some different options,” Carbery said last week. “Mikey’s a unique talent where you can be flexible. He enables me and our staff to be flexible with our lineup because he’s so comfortable moving back and forth from the wing to center. We’ve got a lot of different options.”
Lapierre played in 27 games for the Capitals last season, recording eight points (8a) before being sent back to the AHL’s Hershey Bears. The 23-year-old pivot is a restricted free agent next summer.
Alex Ovechkin has two big milestones upcoming.
Ovechkin is entering his 21st career NHL season and 17th as the Capitals’ captain.
The league’s goals king comes into the 2025-26 campaign just three markers away from becoming the first player in history ever to score 900 goals. He is also just nine games away from playing 1,500 in his legendary career. Only 22 players have ever reached the 1,500 game mark.
Overall, in the first home games of each season in his career, Ovechkin has recorded 31 points (19g, 12a) in 20 games. His best output in a single home opener is four points, which he has done twice, scoring four goals against the Montreal Canadiens in 2017 and tallying two goals and two assists against the New York Rangers in 2021.
Logan Thompson is expected to take more of a number-one starter role this season.
During the 2024-25 season, the Capitals implemented a unique goaltending strategy where Logan Thompson and Charlie Lindgren split starts for the majority of the year. Thompson eventually took over the full-time starter role at the end of the season and into the playoffs, a more prominent role Carbery plans to hand him again this fall.
“I think, you know, Logan, with the year that he had, has earned an opportunity to get a good crack at being our starting goalie,” Carbery said last week.
Thompson was one of the best goaltenders in the NHL last season, winning 31 of his 43 appearances in net. The netminder finished fourth in Vezina Trophy voting after posting a 2.49 goals against average, .910 save percentage, and two shutouts. The Calgary native helped push the Capitals to first place in the Eastern Conference, stopping 26 more goals than expected, per MoneyPuck.
The Capitals signed the 28-year-old backstop to a six-year, $35.1 million contract extension last January. Thompson is determined to prove that his first year with the Capitals was no fluke and will try to do so in a brand new “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” themed mask.
The Capitals’ lines and defense pairings have been set ahead of Opening Night.
Spencer Carbery ran his team through one last full practice on Tuesday before the Capitals take on the Bruins. During the skate, he revealed what will likely be the team’s lineup to begin the year, giving a good glimpse at where he believes his players should be slotted this season.
Projected Capitals lineup
Chisholm, Sonny Milano, and Vincent Iorio are set to be healthy scratches. Veteran rearguard Dylan McIlrath will begin the season on injured reserve after suffering a lower-body injury during the Capitals’ preseason finale against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
The Capitals and Bruins start the season on national TV, with puck drop set for 7:30 pm on TNT and HBO Max.
In five of their last eight season-opening games dating back to 2017-18, the Capitals have earned victories. They have also managed to record at least one standings point in eight of their last 11 season openers (6-3-2).
