1. Too Little
Over the course of the 82-game regular season, only the Tampa Bay Lightning scored more goals than the Capitals, who averaged a positively robust 3.49 lamp-lighters per outing. In the playoffs, that number has dropped to 2.67 overall (padded with five empty-net goals and lowest among teams still in the tourney) and a woeful 1.50 in the second round (which includes an empty netter).
Obviously the low goal total is driven by the worst-fear combo of low shot totals (from 27.6 per game in the regular season to 24.0 in the playoffs and an abysmal 19.3 in the second round) and cratering shooting percentages (12.6, 11.1 and 7.8, respectively, with those numbers dropping off at five-on-five to 10.7, 8.1 and 5.1 in those same subsets).
Taking fewer shots and converting on them less frequently is a pretty lousy formula for winning games.
The lack of scoring at the team level, particularly in the second round, leads to some truly astonishing individual statistical ineptitudes. For example, the Caps’ bottom-nine centers – Pierre-Luc Dubois, Lars Eller and Nic Dowd – do not have a single non-empty net assist to a forward yet (Dubois has two assists on Jakob Chychrun goals, Eller has one; Dubois and Dowd each have an assist on an empty-netter). The team’s four centers (add Dylan Strome to the mix) have two goals in the playoffs, both by Strome in Round 1, and have combined at five-on-five for a single secondary assist in the second round. The Caps don’t have a five-on-five goal in Round 2 from Alex Ovechkin, Tom Wilson, or… wait, I’ll just list the three guys they do have one (and only one) from: Connor McMichael, Aliaksei Protas and Chychrun. A dozen Caps skaters don’t have a five-on-five point in Round 2, including Strome, Ovechkin and Wilson. That ain’t it, fellas.
Maybe you can convince yourself that this is simply bad “puck luck,” regression to more sustainable percentages (though that’s really not how regression works). But it’s not just that. It’s poise, it’s sense of urgency, it’s execution in aspects of the game that happen well before a puck leaves a shooter’s stick and heads towards the net. And the Caps have been subpar in these areas as well, and have the shot totals to prove it. (Also, it’s not just the skaters – Logan Thompson, magnificent in seven of his first eight games this postseason has not been that in the last two.)
Whatever the root causes – the hockey gods, the men tasked with delivering and executing a successful gameplan, the quality of the other side (this isn’t just about the Caps, mind you), or some combination of the three – the Caps have had too little in this series. And now they’re on the verge of having too much… time off this summer.
2. Too Late
If the Caps score on any of the early chances they got in Games 3 and 4 – and they got a lot (23 first period scoring chances and 13 categorized as high-danger, per NST) – maybe things go differently.
Maybe.
The Caps, unsurprisingly, are the only team in the second round without a first period goal (though Carolina’s single opening stanza tally should also be noted), after racking up 90 of them during the regular season (third-most on the circuit).
One thing is for sure – these are not the “comeback Caps” they were even during the regular season. When they’ve fallen behind in this series, it’s been game over. Literally. The Caps are the only team in the second round that has not scored yet scored a game-tying goal when down one, with Carolina holding a 4-0 advantage on the scoreboard, and a 71.6 expected goal share in those situations. So much for score effects.
If only.
3. Two-Game Hole
And so the Caps find themselves in quite the hole, down 3-1 (a deficit the franchise has overcome twice in a dozen tries) to a team that is 8-0 when holding that lead. As poorly and perhaps unluckily as the Caps have played in this series, it also doesn’t feel as if they’re light years away from going home in a different position than the one in which they find themselves. Carolina hasn’t been perfect (and probably was better in the two games they split in D.C. than the ones they swept in Raleigh), and the Caps have to feel as if they’ve yet to play their best game. So let’s math a path to victory. We’ll let Connor McMichael kick things off:
McMichael on the team’s mentality now:
— Sammi Silber 🏒 (@sammisilber) May 13, 2025
“Win the next game. We’re going home, I really like our odds.”#ALLCAPS
Fair. The Caps had third-period leads in both home games in this series, beat Carolina twice at Capital One Arena during the regular season, and went 26-9-6 there during the regular season before tacking on a 4-1 postseason mark so far.
We’ll give the Caps at least a coin-flip chance at winning Game 5 (even if your favorite betting app and/or statistical model says otherwise).
Then it’s back to Carolina for Game 6, with the ‘Canes feeling some pressure to close things out. Surely they’ll be massive favorites, let’s say 75% likely to win. But what are the odds of them sweeping three games in Raleigh? For the sake of our mental wellbeing, put aside the fact that the Game 6 odds are wholly independent of what has come before it (if you flip a coin nine times and it comes up heads all nine times, the odds of a heads on the tenth flip is still 50/50), if you entered the series with each game in Carolina as 75% likely to go to the home team, the likelihood of the ‘Canes winning all three is just 42%. So we’ll ignore “real” math and give the Caps at least a coin-flip chance of taking one of the three, in this case Game 6 because, well, obviously.
Which brings us back to Capital One Arena for a winner-take-all Game 7. All bets are off, all the pressure is on. Flip a coin.
It’s not outlandish. It’s not even wildly unlikely. Go ahead and grab a coin. Flip it – heads the Caps win Game 5, tails they lose. If you got heads, flip it again, same thing. How many games does the series go?
