Thursday night’s game between the Caps and the Carolina Hurricanes was a heavyweight battle of the two current top dogs in the tightly packed Eastern Conference and Metro Division standings. Washington was less than three minutes away from grabbing two points from the Canes, but it ultimately had to settle for a single in a 3-2 shootout loss to Carolina on Thursday night at Capital One Arena.

Logan Stankoven delivered the tying tally for Carolina with 2:15 left in the third period, forcing overtime. The Caps had a few good looks – although Carolina had the better of the possession time in the extra session – from a trio of their top players, but they couldn’t find the go-ahead goal.

And these days, the shootout is more exasperation than anything else for Washington, as it proved to be again Thursday, when none of the Caps three shooters were able to solve Carolina goaltender Brandon Bussi. Seth Jarvis’ first frame shootout goal was all Carolina needed to pick up the extra point, giving Bussi his 10th victory in his first 11 career starts (10-1-0).

“We’ll probably try to utilize different guys, to be honest with you,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery of his team’s shootout approach. “I think this is probably the last straw with the guys that we’ve had. So we’ll look at some different guys.”

Anthony Beauvillier, Dylan Strome and Sonny Milano were the Washington shooters on Thursday. Beauvillier scored the only Caps goal in the team’s previous shootout, a 4-3 loss to Anaheim on Friday in California.

Strome and Beauvillier have the only two Washington shootout goals all season, in 15 attempts. Thursday’s shootout setback was the Caps’ fourth in as many shootouts in 2025-26; they last prevailed in the skills session against the Canes in Carolina last April 10, 5-4. Tonight’s game was the sixth of the last 17 between the two teams that has gone to a shootout; the Caps have won four of the six.

Washington was fortunate to be holding a 2-1 lead late in Thursday’s game. The first two periods were all Carolina; the Canes outshot Washington by a 29-9 count in the first 40 minutes of play, shot attempts were lopsided to the tune of 61-23, and the Canes won two-thirds (20 of 30) of the face-offs in those 40 minutes.

Finally, despite not having the puck nearly as much as Carolina, the Caps were outhit by a 29-21 count, with nearly half of Washington’s total coming from two players on the same line: Beauvillier and Nic Dowd, who had five each.

Dowd sparked the Caps, getting into a fight with Carolina winger Jordan Martinook exactly two seconds into the final frame, a bout that seemed to shake the Caps from whatever doldrums were dragging them down in the first two periods.

“I think it was just probably in response to the hit, nothing out of the normal,” says Dowd, of the reason for the scrap. Dowd’s last hit of the second period – on Carolina’s William Carrier – came in the final 10 seconds of the frame. “It was just kind of one of those things where it needed to be handled, I guess. So, really nothing special.”

And if that wasn’t enough, Dowd snapped a 1-1 tie with his second goal of the season at 11:32 of the third – on his second shift after serving the fighting major – restoring the Washington lead.

“We were a little flat in the first two periods honestly,” says Connor McMichael, whose goal at the five-minute mark of the second staked the Caps to a 1-0 lead. “I thought Dowder right off that opening draw in the third got us going, and obviously a big goal right after that also lifted our spirits.”

At exactly the five-minute mark of the second period, the Caps scored the game’s first goal, doing so for the 12th time in their last 13 games.

From behind the Washington net, Rasmus Sandin launched a long feed toward the opposite blueline, where Alex Ovechkin who laid a perfect leading feed for an onrushing McMichael, who had enough of a step on Mark Jankowski that the latter’s attempt to hook McMichael from behind was futile; he wasn’t close enough. McMichael neatly tucked it through Bussi’s five-hole to give the Caps the lead.

“That was the set breakout that we drew up before the game,” says McMichael. “And it started with Sandy making a nice play up to [Ovechkin], and then Ovi was able to find me weak side with some open ice, and I was able to put it home. So yeah, it worked out well.”

McMichael’s goal came on Washington’s first shot on net in a span of 11 minutes and 48 seconds of playing time. Ironically, it would be another 11 minutes and 48 seconds before the Caps generated another shot from a forward (Beauvillier), though there were a trio of shots from Washington blueliners in the interim.

Between McMichael’s goal and the next shot from a Caps forward, Carolina pulled even at 13:53 on a Nikolaj Ehlers rebound goal.

Dowd was boxed for cross-checking late in the second, and Washington survived that penalty kill.

Seconds after Dowd’s fight with Martinook, Bussi made perhaps his best stop of the game, moving laterally to his left and denying Ovechkin’s back door bid off a fine feed from Beauvillier on the rush.

Washington’s only power play of the night came soon after, but like the rest of its game on this night, the extra man unit wasn’t sharp or crisp.

Of late, the Caps have generated a lot of their offense in zone, often by going low to high and having a strong net front presence. The recipe was similar on Dowd’s go-ahead goal; the Caps won a puck battle in the corner, McMichael put it to Sandin at the left point, and Sandin fed Dowd perfectly at the back door to lift Washington back on top.

But Carolina struck in transition late, cashing in when Sandin lost his footing upon entering the Hurricanes’ zone. The Canes came back up ice on a 4-on-3 situation, and Stankoven snapped it home with 2:15 left.

“It was kind of a moving screen,” says Caps goalie Logan Thompson. “I don’t really know how the play developed; it just kind of popped out to him. He’s a good shooter, and I lost it for a second, and they’re back in the game.”

Carolina’s chaotic offensive zone approach seemed to take the Caps off their game for the first 40, at least until Dowd shook them up a bit.

“We played great for two periods,” says Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour. “We could have had – I think – a few more. We had a few goalposts there early on. We knew they were going to have that push, and it would have been nice to have a couple more, because here they came, and we were kind of on our heels the whole [third] period.

“Give the guys a lot of credit. We found a way to tie it up, and then our goaltending was great tonight again. That allowed us to pull it out.”

The Caps’ goaltending was great, too. Thompson stopped 37 of 39 shots – the second straight game in which he faced down 39 shots – and he yielded two or fewer goals against for 17th time in 22 starts this season.

“We were right there, grinding it out all game,” says Thompson. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t get two points tonight. But we’ll take the point and move on.”

The Capitals have collected at least a point in 13 of their last 14 games (10-1-3).