ARLINGTON, VA — Alex Ovechkin, like so many of his Capitals teammates, has struggled to find the back of the net to start the 2025-26 season. Ovechkin has scored just two goals, both on set plays off faceoffs, and recorded a career-low seven points in his first 12 games, a far cry from the 16-point (8g, 8a) total he’d recorded by this point last year.
That lack of offense from Ovechkin and his teammates has already cost the Capitals dearly: they’ve now dropped four straight games, scoring just five goals in that span.
Ovechkin told reporters on Monday that he was trying not to dwell on his own lack of production, something he believes would only make it harder to break out of the slump.
“We’re all struggling,” Ovechkin said. “But overall, we just have to stick to the plan and keep moving, and eventually you will score…As soon as you start thinking like ‘Oh, you didn’t score,’ or ‘You scored two goals in 12 games,’ whatever, you’re just going to put pressure on yourself.
“You don’t have to do it. You just have to go out there and do as much as you can and best as you can for your team.”
Some of the decline could stem from a preseason injury that caused Ovechkin to miss the first two weeks of training camp, limiting him to the final two exhibition games before the start of the campaign. Ovechkin acknowledged that the aftereffects of his absence have lingered into the regular season, though they’ve lessened with each game.
“It sucks when you’re in training camp, you try to get in shape, and you miss those ice, miss off-ice workouts,” he said. “It’s still a process, but to be honest with you, every game you feel better and better, with the touches, conditioning-wise.”
Much of the blame, too, lies with the Capitals’ power play, which has ranged from mediocre to dismal. The team has scored just six goals on the man advantage, none by Ovechkin, and has gone 0-for-13 during the four-game losing streak.
Head coach Spencer Carbery said Monday that he’s been largely satisfied with Ovechkin’s performance at even strength — the weak points in his game have come on the power play. Carbery was careful not to single Ovechkin’s performance out, noting that the power play has been a team weakness, but he believes the lack of success on special teams has impacted Ovechkin’s play at large.
“Five-on-five, I haven’t minded his game overall through the first 12 games,” Carbery said. “Power play has been an issue, and that’s a product of our whole power play as a group, so I think that negatively affects him. When he’s not getting opportunities, O-zone time, his shot off, scoring chances, you name it, it’s not a good thing. Because a player like him, who — I’m trying to bring you into this — it’s like, his five-on-five game is one thing, but also, power play can help players like O’s five-on-five game.
“Why? Because when you’re feeling good on the power play, when you’re touching the puck, when you’re getting opportunities, when you’re shooting it on net, you go back to the bench after that power play — whether you score or not, you feel good about the game. You feel good, you just touched the puck, you had three shots, you were in the zone, you were around the net, and right now that is few and far between.”
Now 40, Ovechkin has continued to be a regular presence on both power play units, ranking fourth in the NHL with 63:46 of power-play ice time. While Carbery has given Ovechkin some occasional shifts off this fall, he doesn’t expect his overall usage to change.
“I’m completely comfortable with [Ovechkin’s power-play ice time],” Carbery said. “I’m not comfortable with the fact that, if you analyze those minutes and you just watched him straight through, it’s probably him going back [in the defensive zone] for a majority of the minutes. So I’m not comfortable with that part of it. And that’s what we have to get fixed.
“We’ve got to do a better job as a staff, and we need the power play players that are out there to do a better job of making sure that those minutes that we are on the power play are productive and we’re generating something. Again, it’s not about scoring, but we have to be able to generate something in those opportunities and not just constantly go back behind our net, which you are witnessing far too often with our power plays.”
Ovechkin, for his part, declined to offer specifics on where the power play has been faltering.
“I’m not going to say what’s not working,” he said. “It’s up to us and we’ll figure out.”
Carbery has also tinkered with Ovechkin’s even-strength deployments, moving him away from longtime center Dylan Strome to a relatively inexperienced line with Hendrix Lapierre and Ryan Leonard for part of Saturday’s game against the Buffalo Sabres.
2025-26 has thus far proven especially low-scoring for Ovechkin, but he’s shown that he’s capable of emerging from slumps and going on a tear, as he did in 2023-24. That season, Ovechkin was on pace for a 16-goal campaign at the All-Star Break before streaking through the second half of the calendar, scoring 22 goals in the final 35 games.
With a similarly bleak start to the year this fall, Ovechkin — and Capitals fans — hope a similar turnaround is coming once again.
“Sometimes you can’t score in five or six games, and then you score ten games in a row,” Ovechkin said. “Yeah, we’ll see.”
