The only positive coming out of Sunday’s game for the Columbus Blue Jackets is that they don’t have to play the Washington Capitals — or face goaltender Logan Thompson — until the last game of the regular season in mid-April.

That may still be too soon.

Thompson had 39 saves in the Capitals’ 2-0 win before 17,312 in Capital One Arena, handing the Blue Jackets their first shutout loss of the season and continuing to torment them with his right-catching glove, a rarity in the NHL.

In three games this season, the Capitals are 3-0 vs. Columbus, with wins of 5-1, 5-1 and now 2-0. Thompson has been in the cage for all three games against the Blue Jackets, stopping 95 of 97 shots, a sterling .979 save percentage. Sunday’s win was the 100th of his career.

“I don’t know if (Washington’s success vs. Columbus) is structural,” Blue Jackets coach Dean Evason said. “I mean, they’re a good team, obviously. But when you get 40 shots — didn’t we get almost 40 shots? — you’ve got 40 opportunities to score on net. We had some really good quality chances. I think more than anything, the goaltender was real good.”

This game had no resemblance to the Blue Jackets’ game in Florida on Saturday. That game, a 7-6 overtime loss to the Panthers, was proof that half-hearted checking and chaotic goaltending is a blast to watch unless you’re a coach.

On Sunday, facing yet another back-to-back, the Blue Jackets played a much more structured style, and it helped that goaltender Jet Greaves — as reliable as they come — was back in net after an unexpected and mostly unsuccessful run by Elvis Merzļikins.

Greaves, playing his first game in nine days, made 36 saves, including 18 in the second period, and deserved a better fate. That’s been the case in many of his outings this season. He hasn’t won a game since Nov. 20 in Toronto.

He kept the game at 0-0 until the first minute of the second period and it stayed 1-0 until the Capitals scored an empty-net goal with 1:26 remaining to end it.

“Yeah, Jet was real good, real calm,” Evason said. “He made smothering type of saves, where, you know, things don’t compound into second and third opportunities. Yeah, he looked real good.”

The Blue Jackets’ best chance to get back into this game came at 9:25 of the third. Fourth-line winger Brendan Gaunce got up slowly from the ice, wincing, bleeding and holding one of his teeth in his right hand. He’d been highsticked by Washington’s Hendrix Lapierre, drawing a double-minor penalty and putting the Blue Jackets on the power play for four minutes.

The Blue Jackets managed four shots on goal and a couple of solid scoring chances, but the Capitals blocked four shots by four different players — including one that struck Capitals power forward Tom Wilson in the ear — to help kill it off and preserve the close lead.

Only right that LT’s first shutout of the season comes with a season-high 39 saves #ALLCAPS | @hiddenlevelinc pic.twitter.com/WbR5fq4mMK

— Washington Capitals (@Capitals) December 8, 2025

Only 28 seconds after the double-minor ended, the Blue Jackets went down a skater after a penalty on Gaunce.

The Blue Jackets have spent the last month of the season treading water, but eventually they’re going fall behind if this keeps up. Since Nov. 10, the Blue Jackets have only three regulation losses: two to Washington and another to the Winnipeg Jets. All of them have been on the road.

But over the same stretch, the Blue Jackets have just two regulation wins, against the Edmonton Oilers and New Jersey Devils. Their record over the last 15 games — 6-3-6 — looks like something out of Major League Soccer, and it’s landed the Blue Jackets in last place in the Metropolitan Division.

That’s not as bad as it sounds: the Jackets are two points out of a wild-card spot and four points behind Carolina for second place in the Metro. But that’s also what the NHL’s three-point games have created — not just a quagmire in the standings but the false notion that it’ll be easy to climb all those clubs in front of you.

The Blue Jackets, with their tendency to blow leads, have helped boost several other clubs around them in the standings. Even the overtime and shootout wins, which are celebrated like any other win, do damage by dispersing “loser points” across the Eastern Conference.

You can’t tread water forever.

“There’s a lot of belief (in the room),” Greaves said. “There are not necessarily the results we want in the last two days (two games, one point for the Jackets, four for the two other Eastern clubs), but I think there were a lot of positive things in both games. They were close games against good teams that could have gone either way. There are positives to build on, and that’s where our focus is.”