On Wednesday night, the 2025 Washington Capitals hit the ice for game one of 82.

Thankfully for them, there are still 81 to go.

Unable to feed off the home-crowd energy and despite the plethora of chances that the Bruins afforded them, the Capitals showed a lot of rust in the 3-1 loss on opening night.

It was clear from the early going that Washington was disjointed, especially on the power play (of which they had five chances). It wasn’t all negatives, but let’s take a closer look at the first loss of the season.

Slow start begets a sloppy outing

Both teams came out looking rusty. And perhaps the ice wasn’t in an ideal condition either, but I’m just speculating there. At times, it was clear the Caps were fighting the puck a bit and struggled to gain momentum or generate much in the way of a cohesive offense. Lucky for them, the Bruins seemed to share in this general sloppiness.

Defensively, both teams kept the other offense shut down for the majority of the first period. Boston is a defensive-forward team that wasn’t going to make zone entries easy for Washington, and that was on display last night. The Bruins did a better job of shutting down the Capitals in the first period, as Washington managed a measly 23.53% Corsi-for at 5-on-5. Even accounting for the power play chances in the first period, D.C. still struggled to break through the Boston defense.

The second period was a different story, in terms of overall possession. The Capitals seemed to find their footing and found ways through Boston’s defense in order to get shots towards goaltender Jeremy Swayman. They dominated the Bruins in possession stats (72.55% Corsi-for), shots (17-6) and scoring chances (18-5). The Caps also generated 9 high-danger chances in the second period.

But as the game went on through the second and third periods, the general level of sloppiness was an overarching theme. In his post-game presser, Head Coach Spencer Carbury noted that he observed a lot of instances of players fighting the puck and sloppy play. Washington’s defense did a good job of limited Boston to low-danger chances generally, but the play on the attack left a lot to be desired.

Special Teams weren’t too special

I’ll start this critique off by saying that I had hope for the power play in the beginning of the game. The power play was not a point of pride for the Caps last year, and the earlier power play chances (specifically the first two) looked somewhat better. Granted they did not convert, but there seemed to be more organization and better puck movement than what we saw from last year’s team that struggled to gain the zone, let alone maintain pressure on the man advantage.

That hope almost immediately disappeared by the third PP chance…a chance that also led to a 55 second 5-on-3 opportunity. By the time the second period rolled in, the power play looked more like what we had seen a year ago.

I'm sure you can guess what word I'd use to describe it.

By the time it was all said and done, the Caps managed just 11 shots across the five man advantage opportunities, and managed only 7 total scoring chances , with only 2 of those being high-danger chances.

It’s also worth noting that in two consecutive power plays in the first period began with scoring chances by Boston. Obviously, it’s not ideal to start a power play by making your goalie come up with a big save.

What went well?

This isn’t all doom and gloom. I will give credit where it’s due to both teams on defense. Boston obviously did what they had to do to keep the Capitals at bay when they did get themselves together enough to generate offense. Washington’s defense also largely kept Boston shut down, and Logan Thompson did what he needed to do to clean up when mistakes were made.

Thompson can’t be blamed for either goal he allowed in this one either: the first one was a seeing-eye shot that he had no chance on, as Connor McMichael didn’t adequately clear Elias Lindholm out from the front of the net. The second came off David Pastrnak artfully selling a pass to Lindholm who beat LT on the backhand.

If you look at the heat map above, you can see most of Boston’s shot attempts were limited to low-danger areas. In fact, Boston only managed 18 scoring chances (compared to Washington’s 39), and were also held to five high-danger chances throughout the game.

This also shows that the Capitals did their part to generate high-danger chances on Swayman, who managed to stop 35 of the 36 shots he faced. Despite the general sloppiness throughout the night, the Caps offense did manage to get the overwhelming majority of their shots from medium and higher-danger areas. 

Aside from Logan Thompson, there were a few other standout players. Tom Wilson did his part to ignite the offense, notching the first goal of the season by collecting a deflected pass from Aliaksai Protas and sniping it over the blocker of Swayman, and throwing some solid hits. Jakob Chychrun led the team in shot attempts and was second to high-danger chances to Nic Dowd and Wilson, who both generated three.

On to the next one

Again, this is game one. We have 81 more to go. Washington has the benefit of two days to regroup and begin anew before they head up to Long Island on Saturday to face the Islanders (with the Rangers following on Sunday). On paper, they match up favorably against a very young Islanders team currently in the early stages of a rebuild. This is a perfect time to reset and get the offense into gear.