The Washington Capitals saw their playoff hopes jump from a paltry 5.3 percent to… a, well, still paltry 8.8 percent — a 3.3 percent increase — after defeating the Vegas Golden Knights 5-4 (SO) on Saturday night.
The whiplash-inducing game saw the Capitals jump out to a 3-0 lead, Vegas score four consecutive goals — including two shorties on the same Capitals’ second-period power play — and Dylan Strome force overtime before winning it in the shootout.
The Capitals’ victory had an air of triumph. After beating his former team and improving to 4-0-0 in his career against Vegas, a very excited Logan Thompson went down to one knee and pumped his fist. As the Capitals skated out to salute LT, the players converged and began jumping in unison in a giant circle of sweaty humanity.
While many fans have already moved on and accepted a lost season, the Capitals are still playing for their playoff lives.
“Obviously, a little bit of a benefit playing on the West Coast is you get to see all the other results of the day. So we knew we could make up some ground tonight,” Strome explained after the game. “That’s the biggest two points of our season, obviously.”
He later added, “It’s a lot of fun to win here. And, you know, it’s a huge two points.”
Strome, who has been generally accepted as the team’s de facto player statistician (he has admitted in the past to reading the PR’s stat packs), is right if you point to a Spencer Carbery prediction made during the NHL’s Olympic break in February.
Carbery believed that the Capitals would need to win 16 of their final 23 games and end the season with “97, 98 points” to make the postseason.
So where does the team — which has been a kinda meh 7–6–2 since the Olympic break — currently stand in the playoff picture?
The Capitals, with 83 standings points, sit just four points out of the second wild card spot in the Eastern Conference, currently held by one of the hottest teams in the league, the Columbus Blue Jackets (87 standings points). The Blue Jackets have a game in hand on the Capitals — as do all three of the teams ahead of Washington battling for that last ‘loffs spot (minus the Philadelphia Flyers, who own two games in hand).
The Capitals’ other avenue to the big dance is jumping back into the Metropolitan Division race and climbing into the third spot. There, the Pittsburgh Penguins sit with 88 points and one game in hand on the Caps.
With eight regular-season games left in the standings, the Capitals can reach a maximum of 99 standings points if they win all the rest of their games. According to the Carbthagorean theorem, the Caps can only lose one more game either in regulation or have one or two more games be frittered away in extra innings (overtime or the shootout) to remain in the chase.
Standing in the way of the Capitals’ perfect ending is the:
- Philadelphia Flyers on March 31 at home
- New Jersey Devils on April 2 on the road
- Buffalo Sabres on April 4 at home
- New York Rangers on April 5 on the road
- Toronto Maple Leafs on April 8 on the road
- Pittsburgh Penguins on April 11 on the road
- Pittsburgh Penguins on April 12 at home
- Columbus Blue Jackets on April 14 on the road
The Caps play just three of their final eight games at home, and have two back-to-backs. Their longest winning streak of the season is six games. Going on an incredible run here isn’t impossible, but as Spencer Carbery has said, the team is just “running out of runway here.”
