After falling by a score of 6-3 to the Philadelphia Flyers in their return from the 4 Nations Face-Off Break on Saturday, the Edmonton Oilers will look to rebound on Sunday afternoon when they face the Washington Capitals.
1. The Capitals will also be playing in the second leg of a weekend back-to-back when they host the Oilers on Sunday. Washington hammered the Pittsburgh Penguins by a score of 8-3 on the road in their first game back from the break on Saturday.
The win kept Washington neck-and-neck with the Winnipeg Jets in the race for the Presidents’ Trophy. The Jets beat the St. Louis Blues on Saturday for their ninth consecutive victory and sit at the top of the NHL standings with 83 points. The Caps are right behind the Jets with 82 points in 56 games.
2. The Oilers are now in second place in the Pacific Division following their loss against the Flyers on Saturday and a win by the Vegas Golden Knights over the Vancouver Canucks later in the day. The Golden Knights are two points up on Edmonton in the standings but the Oilers have one game in hand over Vegas.
The team will need to bring a much better effort for the rest of this road trip than they did in Philadelphia on Saturday. The Oilers grabbed a 2-1 lead in the first period, completely imploded in the second frame with four goals against, and then only mustered three shots in the third while trailing.
If the Oilers lose to Washington on Sunday, they’ll fall into a three-game losing skid for the first time since the very beginning of the 2024-25 season back in October. After the matinee in the capital on Sunday afternoon, Edmonton will have three more challenges in the Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers, and Carolina Hurricanes before heading home in early March.
3. The Capitals have been one of the biggest surprises in the NHL this season. They’ve gone from a middling team to a serious contender in the Eastern Conference.
Washington snuck into the playoffs with 91 points last year and got swept aside in the first round by the New York Rangers. In the off-season, the Caps retooled by adding Jakob Chychrun, Pierre-Luc Dubois, Andrew Mangiapane, and Logan Thompson through trades along with Matt Roy, Brandon Duhaime, and Taylor Raddysh in free agency.
Through 56 games this season, the Caps are only nine points shy of matching the 91 points they had with a 40-31-11 record in 2023-24. They rank second in the league with 204 goals for, they rank third with 140 goals against, and both of their special teams units are above league average.
4. The Capitals could see all of their top-six forwards reach the 20-goal mark this season. Alex Ovechkin leads the way with 26 goals, Tom Wilson is right behind him with 25 goals, and Aliaksei Protas has set a new career high with 23 goals. Connor McMichael is only one goal away from 20, Dylan Strome needs three more, and Pierre Luc-Dubois needs seven.
The team has also been getting some solid contributions from their bottom-six forwards. Nic Dowd and Andrew Mangiapane both have 11 goals and Brandon Duhaime has chipped in seven. That’s 29 goals all at even strength from Washington’s third line.
5. The most important of the seven additions the Capitals made in the off-season has been goaltender Logan Thompson, who was acquired from the Golden Knights in exchange for two third-round draft picks. The 27-year-old owns a 25-2-5 record and has a .920 save percentage through 32 appearances.
Thompson is in the final season of a three-year contract worth $766,666 per season. Back in January, the Caps rewarded Thompson with a six-year extension worth $5.85 million annually, a massive raise from his previous deal with Vegas.
6. Another major storyline to follow with the Capitals this season is Alex Ovechkin’s chase of Wayne Gretzky’s record for most goals in NHL history.
The 39-year-old Ovechkin has 26 goals through 39 games this season, a surprising resurrection after he scored only 31 goals in 79 games last year. The Russian Machine has 879 goals in his career, 15 back of The Great One’s 894 goals. We’ll likely see this record broken in the coming months.
