{"id":448666,"date":"2026-02-06T10:08:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T10:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/448666\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T10:08:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T10:08:19","slug":"thompson-returns-from-ir-to-lead-the-capitals-past-nashville-now-he-heads-to-the-olympics-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/448666\/","title":{"rendered":"Thompson returns from IR to lead the Capitals past Nashville. Now he heads to the Olympics | National"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Logan Thompson was back in net, just in time for the Olympics.<\/p>\n<p>Thompson returned from injured reserve and made 27 saves to lift the Washington Capitals to <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/capitals-predators-score-5c3cf2ab82fef989594b637d45c5c366\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a 4-2 victory<\/a> over the Nashville Predators on Thursday night. It was the team&#8217;s final game before the Olympic break. Thompson is on Canada&#8217;s roster.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s important to get this one before the break, and feeling good with confidence going into this big tournament,\u201d Thompson said.<\/p>\n<p>Thompson played for the first time since Jan. 27, and the Capitals needed him to be sharp, especially when Jonathan Marchessault and Erik Haula came in alone on a two-man breakaway for Nashville. Thompson stopped Marchessault&#8217;s shot.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was fantastic tonight right from the start. So many big saves in that game,&#8221; Washington coach Spencer Carbery said. \u201cI&#8217;ll be honest with you. We weren&#8217;t very good. So without that performance we are not getting two points tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tom Wilson, Thompson&#8217;s teammate for Canada, opened the scoring for Washington. Pierre-Luc Dubois \u2014 who was coming back from an even longer injury absence, having not played since Oct. 31 \u2014 made it 2-0 before the first period was over.<\/p>\n<p>The Capitals remained four points behind the New York Islanders for third place in the Metropolitan Division. They&#8217;re also four behind for the last wild card in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s a concern for later. Now Thompson can focus on trying to win a gold medal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s a dream come true,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I&#8217;m going to just go there and soak it all in and do any little bit that they want me to do, whether that&#8217;s practice goalie, backup, hand out the water bottles. I&#8217;m just going to be happy to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jakob Chychrun scored two goals for the Capitals, bringing his season total to 21, the most among NHL defensemen. Alex Ovechkin assisted on Chychrun&#8217;s second goal, but he played only 13:15 \u2014 one of the lowest ice time totals of his career.<\/p>\n<p>Dubois was without a point in his first six games this season, then had surgery for injuries to his abdominal and adductor muscles. He made it back a bit earlier than initially expected.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were circling this game on the calendar. It was an ambitious goal. At times we didn&#8217;t know if we were going to be able to do it,\u201d Dubois said. \u201cThe staff just did such a fantastic job of helping me and putting me in position to succeed. I owe it all to them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Logan Thompson was back in net, just in time for the Olympics. Thompson returned from&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5114],"tags":[911,191,5,4,292,5966,43,2583,190,109,54394,5222],"class_list":{"0":"post-448666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-capitals","8":"tag-athlete-injuries","9":"tag-capitals","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-nhl-hockey","13":"tag-olympic-games","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-sports-transactions","16":"tag-washington","17":"tag-washington-capitals","18":"tag-washington-capitals-pierreluc-dubois-logan-thompson","19":"tag-washingtoncapitals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116023139037361914","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}