Where The Devil Don’t Stay – Tonight marks the first of the four meetings between the Caps and the New Jersey Devils this season; the two Metro Division rivals haven’t seen one another in nearly a full year in the regular season. The Caps and Devils met for the fourth and final time last season on Nov. 30, 2024.
Both sides may be missing key players who played in their team’s most recent game. New Jersey center Jack Hughes has already been ruled out of tonight’s game with a non-hockey related hand injury while Caps defenseman John Carlson did not take the ice at the Caps’ Saturday morning skate.
“Not overly concerned,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery, queried as to Carlson’s status. “But he missed the skate this morning, so we’ll see how he is tonight. So, a game time [decision].”
Carlson has played 1,105 career NHL games, tied with Nicklas Backstrom for second on the franchise’s all-time list. With 14 points (four goals, 10 assists) in 17 games this season, Carlson is tied for seventh in scoring among defensemen in the NHL.
With 20 points (10 goals, 10 assists) in 17 games, Hughes is tied for 22nd in the NHL’s scoring race, and he is the Devils’ leading scorer. He underwent surgery on his finger and is expected to miss eight weeks of action, which would have him back ahead of the 2026 Olympic Games.
Young And Daily Growing – With 40-year-old Alex Ovechkin and 35-year-old Carlson still plying their trade in Washington, the Caps are sometimes seen as an older club in the NHL. As we noted in this space just prior to the start of the season, the 2025-26 Caps have a layered, bell curve type roster that features a cluster of players in their primes, as well as a sprinkling of both older and younger players.
In Thursday night’s 6-3 loss to the Florida Panthers, some of those younger players were standouts for the Caps. Down 3-1 entering the third period, Justin Sourdif scored in the first minute of the final frame, pulling the Caps to within a goal of the defending champs.
After Florida increased its lead again, Ryan Leonard turned in a terrific shift where he planted himself at the top of the paint, nearly scored on a couple of opportunities of his own and supplied the traffic in front when Rasmus Sandin snaked a shot through for Washington’s third goal of the night.
Both Sourdif and Leonard have played in all 17 games for the Caps this season, but both have seen their ice time limited in some of those games as well. Other young and/or less experienced players at the NHL level such as Hendrix Lapierre, Declan Chisholm and Ethen Frank have had nights watching in the press box this season, and they’ve had nights where they were visible contributors in Washington wins.
Ideally, every player on the roster improves from the start of training camp to season’s end every year, but the improvement – and sometimes, the lack thereof – is often more noticeable in younger players because a single season represents such a large slice of their playing careers to date, relative to that of older players.
“That’s the goal, that’s what we’re trying to do,” says Carbery. “That’s what they’re trying to do, is progressively get better with experience. It’s hard to say, should you expect that? Yeah, you should expect to see improvement in each individual, but I will say the development trajectory and timeline is different for everybody. Some guys look really comfortable after 10 games, 50 games. Some guys it takes a little bit longer, but that’s what they’re working towards every day, and that’s what we’re working towards as a staff, is helping them speed up the development process as quickly as possible.
“And when you see positives, so let’s think about Florida, arguably Ryan Leonard’s best game in the NHL, and Justin Sourdif, for sure his best game as a Washington Capital in Florida. So, there’s two very positive games and performances by two individuals that are just breaking into the league and trying to find their footing and trying to work every day to become really productive NHL players. And so those are positive steps.
“So, what do you do after that? It doesn’t mean it’s going to look like that every night; I’m sure there’s going to be tough nights. You hope that they can go on a run of playing well, but then as a coach, you take a lot of those things that they did in Florida, talk to them about them, show them, ‘Here’s why you were successful, here’s what led to you generating good opportunities for yourself or for your teammates.’”
The trajectory and length of every NHL career is different, but it’s always tantalizing to see performances like we saw from Sourdif and Leonard on Thursday and wonder what goes into developing the consistency required to play 82 games a season at that level, season after season, as the likes of Ovechkin and Carlson have already done, or as a guy like Nic Dowd figured out early on (see below) in his career.
It’s the consistency that has led Ovechkin and Carlson to play in over a thousand games in the League, and that consistency is what the Caps’ group of younger players is still seeking.
“That’s where you become a consistent NHL player, and you figure out where you fit with your role,” says Carbery. “And Justin Sourdif I would say is still figuring out what he is going to be in the NHL long-term, which is great. A lot of players come into the League, and they think they’re a power play quarterback defenseman, and then they find out, ‘Okay, maybe not.’
“Rasmus Sandin is a prime example of that. Came into the League I remember in Toronto, and was highly touted prospect, supposed to run the first unit power play – Erik Karlsson Jr. – and his trajectory went a little bit differently. Now, he’s a great NHL defenseman, just in a little bit of a different role. Those guys are no different of finding their role and their niche, and then when you bring it into a team setting, now they’re trying to become consistent on a winning team, helping a team win games consistently, and finding a role inside of that.”
Leonard and Sourdif and Frank are all still under the 50-game level for their NHL careers, while Chisholm crossed that threshold early this season and Lapierre did so in Thursday’s game in Florida. They’re all still trying to find their way in the League, and their ability to stack up more performances like Thursday’s is what results in the consistency needed to carve out a longer and more prosperous career in the best League on the planet.
Center Of Gravity – Dowd skates in his 600th career NHL game tonight, a remarkable achievement for a player drafted in the seventh round of the 2009 NHL Draft. Since the NHL Draft adapted its current seven-round format in 2005, Dowd is just the eighth player drafted in that round to amass as many as 600 games in the League. One of those eight players – New Jersey’s Ondrej Palat – was drafted two years after Dowd.
Weeks after Washington won the Stanley Cup in the spring of 2018, Dowd signed a one-year deal – for $650K – to join the Caps, ostensibly to replace Jay Beagle in the middle of the team’s fourth line. An undrafted free agent, Beagle played 471 games with the Caps over 10 seasons before signing a free agent deal with Vancouver that same summer of 2018.
That first season went well enough for the Caps and Dowd to agree on a three-year extension, a pact that only upped his salary to $750K for those three seasons. When Peter Laviolette began the first of his three seasons behind the Washington bench in 2020-21, he made the fateful decision to task Dowd and his linemates – Carl Hagelin and Garnet Hathaway at the time – with more ice time and greater responsibility in the form of a defined role: going up against one of the opposition’s top two lines and neutralizing them on a nightly basis, despite starting a significantly slanted amount of shifts in the defensive end of the ice.
Dowd had played 251 games in the League at that point. He embraced and thrived in that role, and he has made himself into one of the league’s best at what he does, all while delivering consistently enough to see his ice time and his production gradually climb and settle in at an established rate, and he has now played roughly 60 percent of his career in that role.
And without getting and seizing that opportunity, there’s no guarantee that Nic Dowd skates in his 600th game here tonight.
“Absolutely agree, and he’s another example, like Sandin,” says Carbery. “Nic Dowd was a point producer in college [St. Cloud St.], and I believe – I love to drop this – was a Hobey Baker finalist at St. Cloud. Shout out Nic Dowd, college career!
“He comes to the American Hockey League in LA’s organization. Again, a bit of a point producer out there, played power play, and then comes to the NHL and has to figure out a role, and it took a few years. He figured out what he was going to be, found a niche, and now – 600 games later – he’s still playing in the NHL and a very, very productive player.”
Last season – his 10th in the NHL – Dowd established career highs in goals, points and games played, and he logged upwards of 15 minutes a night for the second straight season. In his first season with Washington in 2018-19, Dowd averaged just 10:18 per game, so he has seen a gradual increase of roughly 50 percent in his ice time since arriving here.
“That was huge,” says Dowd of being given that opportunity just under five years ago. “I think any player in the NHL wants to be given responsibility and opportunity, and to see what you can do in this League. So, I think going back five or six years ago, it was great. I played with two really great players to start out that line, and we were able to gain some momentum and play through that season and then the next. I’ll always be thankful for that.”
Goodbye Lefty – Tonight in DC, the Devils are likely to line up with a trio of ex-Caps defensemen populating their blueline, and all three of them on the left side.
Jonas Siegenthaler skates the left side of New Jersey’s first pairing. A second-round pick (57th overall) in the 2015 NHL Draft, the 28-year-old Siegenthaler debuted with the Caps seven years ago last week, and he logged 97 games over parts of three seasons with Washington before being dealt to the Devils on April 11, 2021.
Veteran Brenden Dillon skates the left side of New Jersey’s second pairing. The rugged 34-year-old rearguard is just nine games shy of reaching 1,000 games for his NHL career, a significant achievement for an undrafted player. The Caps obtained Dillon from San Jose on Feb. 18, 2020 and later signed him to a four-year contract extension. But a year into that four-year deal, the Caps dealt Dillon to Winnipeg. He skated 66 games with the Capitals and suits up for his 100th game as a member of the Devils tonight.
And finally, Dennis Cholowski is expected to man the left side of the Devils’ third blueline pairing. A first-round pick (20th overall) of the Detroit Red Wings in the 2016 NHL Draft, Cholowski was a Capital only for a few months. Washington claimed him off waivers from Seattle on Oct. 14, 2021, and after skating in just seven games with the Caps, he was reclaimed off waivers by the Kraken less than four months later, on Feb. 9, 2022.
In The Nets – Logan Thompson gets the net for the Capitals tonight, making his fourth consecutive start. Lifetime against New Jersey, he is 2-0-2 in four appearances – all starts – with a 3.60 GAA and an .881 save pct.
Veteran Jacob Markstrom is the likely starter for New Jersey tonight. Despite a 5-2-1 record, Markstrom’s qualitative numbers are less than stellar; he enters the game with a 3.67 GAA and an .870 save pct. on the season.
Lifetime against the Caps, Markstrom is 2-8-3 in 13 appearances – all starts – with a 3.28 GAA and an .892 save pct.
All Down The Line – Here’s how the Capitals and the Devils might look on Saturday night in DC:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
72-Beauvillier, 17-Strome, 9-Leonard
29-Lapierre, 24-McMichael, 8-Ovechkin
21-Protas, 34-Sourdif, 43-Wilson
22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 53-Frank
Defensemen
6-Chychrun, 3-Roy
38-Sandin, 47-Chisholm
42-Fehervary, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Healthy Extras
15-Milano
52-McIlrath
Injured/Out
74-Carlson (undisclosed)
80-Dubois (lower body)
NEW JERSEY
Forwards
28-Meier, 13-Hischier, 81-Gritsyuk,
18-Palat, 91-Mercer, 63-Bratt
83-Lammikko, 47-Cotter, 11-Noesen
20-Lachance,14-Glendening, 37-Legare
Defensemen
71-Siegenthaler, 17-Nemec
5-Dillon, 43-L. Hughes
44-Cholowski, 45-White
Goalies
25-Markstrom
34-Allen
Healthy Extras
None
Injured/Out
7-Hamilton (lower body)
8-Kovacevic (knee)
12-Glass (undisclosed)
15-MacEwen (undisclosed)
16-Brown (upper body)
21-McLaughlin (upper body)
22-Pesce (hand)
33-Dadonov (hand)
86-J. Hughes (finger)
