The Washington Capitals have picked the wrong time to look mortal.
After flying through much of the regular season and losing just one game to the Montreal Canadiens in the first round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Capitals have faltered against the Carolina Hurricanes, dropping two straight road games to push themselves to the brink of elimination.
Washington now faces the daunting task of climbing back from a 3-1 series deficit, a feat accomplished just 32 times in NHL history. With the odds stacked against them, the Capitals are taking on the job one step at a time.
“Just focus on tomorrow’s task,” Dylan Strome said Wednesday. “We’ve been a great home team all year. We’ve found ways to win important games, and tomorrow’s no different. One game at a time. Hopefully win Game 5 and put a little pressure on them.”
While last year’s Capitals battled their way into the postseason, the 2024-25 team had little trouble making the playoffs, becoming the first in the league to secure a spot. They’ve shown they’re capable of bouncing back, putting up a record of 25-8-1 in games after a loss and leading the league in regular-season comeback wins, but Game 5 will mark the first time they’ve taken the ice with their season on the line.
The stakes are higher than they’ve been all year, but Tom Wilson is confident that the team’s tenacity will come through once again.
“We believe in here,” he said. “We know what this team can do. We’ve been one of the best teams in the league all year. It starts with one game. We’ve won one game plenty of times…We’re confident in our group. We’ve had resiliency kind of all year. We love each other in here, and we just want to go out there and leave it all out there and start to slowly try and push them out of the series.”
For Ryan Leonard, who is set to play in the first elimination game of his NHL career, the team’s message is clear.
“Play every shift like it’s your last, work every single shift, and make an impact in a positive way,” he said of his mindset.
Though the Caps have been successful at times in overcoming bumps in the road, they’ve still had a relatively smooth path through the season, with less experience pushing past major obstacles than opponents who fought their way into the playoffs. Head coach Carbery, however, rejected the notion that his team hadn’t had experience battling through setbacks.
“I know a lot of people will look at adversity through the year as wins and losses, but I felt like as a group, internally, that we’ve dealt with our fair share of quote-unquote ‘adversity’ of struggling with our game a little bit, not looking as good as we would like to,” he said. “Even though maybe we found a way to grind out some wins that, if you weren’t looking under the hood, you’d be, ‘Oh, that was a really good stretch for the Caps,’…
“So I think our team has been pretty mentally tough all year long in all different situations, even though, if you’re going to point to a six-game losing streak, it didn’t happen, right? If you’re using that as the only criteria that we have — but I look at a bunch of different things and I look at it as speed bumps, as adversity we get through as a group.”
That’s not to say that the Capitals won’t have to make changes if they want to keep themselves alive. Carbery shook up his lines at Wednesday’s practice, moving Connor McMichael to center in a deployment he’s rarely used this season. Increasing shot volume could give them a better chance at beating Hurricanes goaltender Frederik Andersen, and Washington’s power play will have to improve after failing to score on a four-minute opportunity in Game 4.
Still, the Caps believe they’ve already done part of what it takes. Though they gave up the first goal in Games 3 and 4, they were the better team to start both games before floundering under pressure. Strome said Wednesday that “nothing” needs to change about the team’s starts — except for their ability to keep them going.
“We’ve had some really good looks, kind of had them on their heels in the first, and they seemed to kind of flip the script a little bit in the third on us in those two games in Carolina, so it’s just about maintaining it,” he said. “They don’t take a shift off, and we can’t, either. … That one shift kind of changes the momentum of the first period there for the last seven, eight minutes. You’ve got to be on your toes against this team, and I expect a good effort from us, and we’ll be ready for Game 5.”
The Hurricanes have been largely successful at suffocating the Capitals’ offense so far, keeping them from mounting sustained pressure while capitalizing on Washington’s mistakes. Gone are the days when the Caps rolled past opponents in the regular season. But after a months-long demonstration of what they’re capable of, the Capitals have faith they can pull it off once again.
“My mentality is you wake up and you get ready to leave it all out there,” Wilson said. “You just do the best you can. And if everybody gets close to their max effort and their best game, we’ll have a good chance.”
