The Washington Capitals (79 standings points) are unlikely to make the postseason, as this year’s club is on pace to finish well behind the 2024-25 team, which finished first in the Eastern Conference with 111 points.
Alex Ovechkin was asked about the team’s poor performance in the 2025-26 campaign during a recent Russian-language interview he did for Fonbet’s ‘FONtour NHL’ published on March 20. While speaking with retired pro soccer player Andrey Arshavin and former NHL player Nikita Filatov, Ovechkin proposed three key reasons the Capitals have struggled this season.
Per a sports.ru transcription of the interview and an English translation via Google Translate:
Andrey Arshavin: A year ago, Washington was playing confidently, first in its division, but now the players seem to be the same, but the hockey is different. Why is this happening?
Alex Ovechkin: First of all, one of our key players, Dubois, was injured… He missed, I think, four months. And Lapierre, Sourdif, and McMichael were supposed to be replacing him. The balance was immediately disrupted while we were trying to find the right combinations. When you play with one person, you have a feel. When you have other teammates, it’s difficult. It takes time for them to figure out what’s what. There was no feel.
Nikita Filatov: Okay, Dubois is an important part of the team, the second center, but he’s certainly not the only reason for the team’s fall from the top to a team fighting for a playoff spot. Are there other factors?
Alex Ovechkin: Luck. If you look at the stats we’re showing now and look at last year’s stats, we were scoring a lot more than we are now. If you look at the last four games, we’re scoring two goals, two pucks per game.
Nikita Filatov: Well, most of them, too. And not just in terms of implementation, but also in terms of content. Sometimes it’s impossible to get into the zone…
Alex Ovechkin: The power play comes last. There are certain points — it’s no secret — that we’re lagging behind in that area.
Dubois, the team’s fourth leading scorer last season (20g, 46a), missed 52 games due to two separate injuries he suffered at the start of the season. He went under the knife to repair his abdominal and adductor muscles in early November, returning to game action last month. Since his return on February 5, the Capitals have posted a 7-5-2 record. All three young players Ovechkin names — McMichael, Lapierre, and Sourdif — have struggled to produce night-in, night-out like Dubois did last season.
Luck or scoring wise, the Capitals have scored a middle-of-the-pack 219 goals this season (17th best) after lighting the lamp 286 times in 2024-25, the second-most goals in the league. With 10 games remaining on the schedule, the Capitals are on pace to score 37 fewer times by season’s end. After having the highest shooting percentage (12.61) in the NHL last season, the Capitals have connected on 10.67 percent of their shots this year, the 20th-best mark in the league.
Ovechkin also mentions the team’s power play (16.4 percent), which is ranked 30th of 32 teams in effectiveness. Ovi himself scored his first power-play goal on home ice this season against the Colorado Avalanche on Sunday in the team’s 71st game of the campaign.
Later, when asked directly whether he thought the Capitals could still make the postseason, Ovechkin said, “Sports are unpredictable.” He elaborated further when speaking about the strength of the Eastern Conference this season and how the NHL does its playoff seeding.
Andrey Arshavin: One last thing, I think, about hockey. What was a bit unusual for me about the playoffs was how the eight teams were determined. I think it’s unfair.
Alex Ovechkin: We’re in the East, and they’re in the West. They have fewer points in the West than we do. I think a lot of general managers and the league are wondering right now how it’s possible that a team with more points doesn’t make the playoffs than a team in a different conference.
Andrey Arshavin: In the conference, they are still in conferences, they still have 8-8.
Alex Ovechkin: Take, for example, Anaheim, Vegas, and Los Angeles. We have more points than them. But we don’t make the playoffs. They’re currently fighting for a playoff spot.
Nikita Filatov: See, how interesting. This is Sasha talking about making the playoffs. And Kaprizov, for example, tells us, “Wow, we have a division, they have a division, and the first three teams are much higher than the rest.” So, the fourth team in their division is higher than the first team in that division.
Andrey Arshavin: On points. But he can’t compete because there’s a limited number in the division.
Nikita Filatov: And Kaprizov has the first and second rounds against the two strongest teams.
Alex Ovechkin: Listen, take it back when I was number eight or number nine, I don’t remember the season we were playing. Our first [seeded team] plays against number eight, our second against number seven.
Andrey Arshavin: It’s cool, isn’t it? This is more correct.
Alex Ovechkin: That’s more correct. Now they’ve come up with the wild card. For me, it’s better to do it as usual: first, eighth, and so on.
Nikita Filatov: According to the classics.
Alex Ovechkin: Of course. What’s there to invent?
If the Capitals were in the Western Conference, their 79 standings points would have them solidly in a playoff spot. The second-place team in the NHL’s Pacific Division, the Edmonton Oilers, has 79 points, while the third-place Vegas Golden Knights have 78. The team that currently holds the second wild-card playoff position, the Nashville Predators, has 77.
