Caps Conclude ’25-26 Slate in Columbus

April 14 vs. Columbus Blue Jackets at Nationwide Arena

Time: 7:00 p.m.

TV: MNMT, ESPN

Radio: Team 980/Caps Radio Network

Washington Capitals (42-30-9)

Columbus Blue Jackets (40-29-12)

Coming off a smashing weekend in which they swept a set of home-and-home back-to-back video games from the playoff-bound Pittsburgh Penguins, the Caps take to the highway but once more on Monday. They head to Columbus the place they’ll play their 2025-26 common season finale towards the Blue Jackets at Nationwide Arena.

As for what precisely the stakes of Tuesday’s sport in Columbus will probably be, nicely, these will probably be decided tonight in Philadelphia the place the Flyers host the Carolina Hurricanes. As of Monday morning, just one playoff berth stays to be chosen in the Eastern Conference, and Philadelphia presently occupies that slot.

Unlike Columbus and Washington, which have solely their Tuesday head-to-head date remaining to be performed this season, the Flyers have two video games remaining. Philly is internet hosting a set of back-to-back video games early in the week. After they tackle the Hurricanes on Monday, the Flyers host the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday. The Flyers want to select up only one level to remove Columbus and two factors to manage the knockout punch to Washington.

So, whereas the Caps are heading to Columbus to complete off their common season slate on Tuesday, they want Philly to lose Monday night time’s match towards Carolina, which is prone to relaxation a raft of regulars, because the Penguins did in each video games towards the Caps over the weekend. What the Caps do know is they’ll have their collective eyeballs glued to the tv screens in Columbus on Monday night time, they usually hope the Hurricanes can defeat Philly, which might make their Tuesday night time tilt with the Jackets a significant one.

“We’re just going to obviously scoreboard watch [Monday] and see what happens,” says Caps center Dylan Strome. “Nothing else we can do now, just go into Columbus and try to get two points. Hopefully, we get a good result [Monday] and that’s all we can focus on.”

With the sweep of the weekend set of back-to-backs, the Caps carry a three-game profitable streak with them to Ohio’s capital metropolis, and no matter how issues end up on the out-of-town scoreboard on Monday night time, the Caps will take goal at extending their profitable streak to 4 after they go up towards the Jackets. Washington has had a handful of three-game profitable streaks in current weeks and months, but it surely hasn’t received 4 in a row because it had a six-game profitable streak stopped on Dec. 5 in Anaheim.

The fundamental motive the Caps awoke Monday morning with a faint playoff heartbeat is the play of goaltender Logan Thompson, who blanked the Penguins by a 3-0 rely on 24 photographs in Sunday’s rematch. An earlier afternoon, Thompson confronted a a lot lighter workload of only a dozen photographs in a 6-3 win over the Pens in Pittsburgh, in a sport in which many regulars – together with Pens captain Sidney Crosby – sat out to get some additional relaxation forward of the beginning of the Stanley Cup playoffs this weekend.

“We know obviously that they’re a great hockey team,” says Strome of the Penguins. “We’re lucky that they did not play their full lineup each video games, however you continue to need to go on the market and battle and get these wins. Sometimes these are more durable to play as a result of some guys are getting their alternative and totally different guys are stepping up for them.

“They gave us a good effort [Sunday]; they controlled the game for a lot of the third period, but we held firm and [Thompson] It was great, and guys were blocking shots and making plays. Obviously, a huge play by [Connor McMichael] and [Ryan Leonard] to put that game away there in the third.”

Trevor van Riemsdyk broke a scoreless stalemate halfway by means of the center interval, staking the Caps to a 1-0 lead they carried into the third interval. As the Penguins turned the warmth up and pressured the Caps in their very own finish of the ice in search of an equalizer, Leonard arrange McMichael for a vital insurance coverage strike with 4:10 remaining. Two minutes later, a McMichael empty-net objective – with an help from Alex Ovechkin – iced the sport for the house workforce, and sealed Thompson’s fourth shutout of the season and his second in a span of three begins.

Beyond all of the heroics on the ice, Sunday’s sport was memorable as a day in which Washington followers lavished Ovechkin with love earlier than, throughout and after the sport. With the Caps’ captain’s contract expiring in June, and their future plans nonetheless undecided, the locals turned out in quantity, they usually turned up the amount inside the sector, imploring the NHL’s best objective scorer for “one more year!” and frequent chants of “Ovi, Ovi, Ovi!”

“What he has done for this city, you can’t put into words,” says Caps proper wing Tom Wilson. “He’s actually modified the sport, he is modified the sport of hockey, he is modified all the things in this metropolis. What he is performed, it could not ever be performed once more for a franchise.

“He was so necessary to the League, so necessary to the sport of hockey, and so necessary to the town. You see the stuff he did off the ice on the phase the opposite night time; that stuff is so necessary. I feel there are a whole lot of hundreds of children who play the sport due to him and look as much as him daily. He has worn all that and performed it with class. And the quantity of stress he has been by means of, he simply continues to exceed expectations and be a legend of the sport.”

Sunday’s sport was a beautiful tribute to Ovechkin. And given the must-win circumstances of the sport, it may have ended badly for the Caps if they’d gotten caught up in the feelings of the afternoon. But regardless of enjoying with out defenseman Rasmus Sandin, who has been one of many workforce’s high performers in its late push for a postseason berth, the Caps shrugged it off and bought the 2 factors.

With Sandin on the sidelines, Timothy Liljegren – obtained from San Jose on March 6 – stepped in and seamlessly skated 21:16 whereas seeing his first sport motion in practically a month, since a March 14 sport towards the Bruins in DC.

“I just think it speaks to our group,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery of his workforce’s clutch Sunday efficiency. “I knew even going again to the [trade] deadline when all of the stuff occurred with John [Carlson] and nic [Dowd]. And as powerful as that was, I do know our guys and I do know O, and I do know Tom Wilson, and I do know that there was simply no approach that we had been going to throw the towel in, and simply cruise in and hopefully play .500 hockey or simply trip it out.

“It doesn’t suggest that we had been going to make the playoffs, however I knew that we would not pack it in and we had been going to battle to win hockey video games, any which approach you look, even when we weren’t nearly as good a workforce, even when we had been perhaps leaking oil slightly bit and giving up extra probabilities, which is factual. And that is an instance of precisely that; our guys should not laying down. The playoff odds and all that, it’s what it’s. It’s a slim probability, however we weren’t going to present into these odds and the possibility of us doing it. We had been going to proceed to attempt to get two factors each single night time and go away all the things we have on the ice.”

Now, each the Caps and Columbus are hoping for slightly little bit of assistance on Monday night time from Carolina. It’s as much as the Hurricanes now to present that means to Tuesday’s sport between the Caps and the Jackets.