Lighting the Lamp: First place Caps come home after successful trip

“Lighting the Lamp” is a new WTOP feature added this winter. Take a look back at the inaugural article, if you missed it.

Washington Capitals goaltender Logan Thompson watches the puck during the second period of an NHL hockey game against the Anaheim Ducks, Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)(AP/Nick Wass)

The Washington Capitals, barring a collapse for the ages, are on track to make the playoffs for the second straight year. So it’s understood every game with a potential playoff foe, even though it’s only one of 82 in the regular season, merits a little bit more of a microscope regardless of the context (road trips, back-to-backs, etc).

The Caps began February with a potential Stanley Cup Final preview, slipping in overtime to Western Conference-leading Winnipeg. And despite a 5-4 defeat, the “rock the red glass” is more than half-full, especially after going 3-1-1 on their longest road trip of the season.

They also have Alex Ovechkin scoring in consecutive games after he’d been somewhat dry for a few weeks (we’ll update the Ovi-dometer below).

Record: 34-11-7 (after an 9-1-4 January plus Saturday’s overtime loss to Winnipeg), good enough for first place in the Metropolitan Division (seven points ahead of Carolina). They also own the best record in the Eastern Conference (10 points better than Atlantic Division-leading Florida) while standing two points behind the Jets for the best mark in the NHL.

The playoff cushion for the team that didn’t punch its postseason ticket until the final week is 17 points over the first team out of the Wild Card — Boston.

Rankings: Second (3.49 goals per game) in scoring while leading the NHL in goals against (2.37), 10th (23.1%) on the power play and third (83.9%) on the penalty kill.

Diamonds Direct Iceman: Goaltender Logan Thompson went 8-0-1 with a goals-against average of 1.48 and a saves percentage of .947. He also was named the league’s First Star of the Week on Jan. 20, and signed a six-year contract extension worth $35.1 million in January while being named the league’s Second Star of the Month over the weekend.

Hot Sticks and Cold Pads: Forward Pierre-Luc Dubois led the team in scoring with six goals and seven assists while Aliaksei Protus added five goals with six assists. Protus has already shattered his career-high for goals in a season (21 as opposed to 13 combined over his first three years) and is one assist away from reaching the 23 he dished out last year.

Ovi-dometer: Alex Ovechkin wrapped up January with six goals and then scored in Saturday’s loss to Winnipeg, giving him 24 for the season and 877 for his career, which places Ovi 17 away from Wayne Gretzky’s NHL record.

Ovi’s 24 goals in 36 games places him on pace for 43 if he plays every game for the rest of the season. Prorating his pace over the final 31 games of this season has Ovechkin reaching Gretzky’s mark in game 27, which is Thursday, April 10, against Carolina. Game 28 is Saturday, April 12, at the Hurricanes.

Matchup of the Month: Tuesday, Feb. 4, the Capitals follow up their showdown with Western Conference-leading Winnipeg by hosting Atlantic Division-leading Florida. The Caps took the first meeting between these two teams Nov. 25, as Lars Eller scored twice in the 4-1 victory where the Panthers managed just 21 shots on goal.

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Dave Preston

Dave has been in the D.C. area for 10 years and in addition to working at WTOP since 2002 has also been on the air at Westwood One/CBS Radio as well as Red Zebra Broadcasting (Redskins Network).

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