📸 : RMNB
The Washington Capitals have lost four games in a row, something they didn’t do a single time last season. The latest defeat, a 4-3 loss, came in a shootout to the Buffalo Sabres.
Well, at least they grabbed a point this time. Still, they need a win badly just to be able to pick their heads up.
#NHL GameScore Impact Card for Washington Capitals on 2025-11-01
#ALLCAPS
— HockeyStatCards (@hockeystatcards.com) November 1, 2025 at 10:00 PM
The Capitals yet again looked great from a pure numbers perspective at five-on-five, limiting the Sabres to just three high-danger chances in the game. Unfortunately, they don’t determine standings points by how good you look statistically, and there are other factors at play in hockey games that impact results. We’ll review the primary two at fault on Saturday in the next two bullets.
We need to discuss the power play again. I don’t want to, but we have to. They went 0-for-4 and are now 0-for-13 on this losing streak, playing a massive part in delivering all four losses. The Capitals seemingly reverted to the two-defenseman look on their first unit that I’ve complained about, with Jakob Chychrun back playing a bizarre net-front role. I honestly don’t know what else to say about the whole thing other than that I think they might need to rewrite the script and come up with something completely new. Changing the personnel isn’t having any effect, so simply running the same system thinking something will magically change isn’t going to work. I’ll write this next sentence, and you can extrapolate the meaning behind it yourself. I haven’t been impressed with Kirk Muller’s work on the power play since he arrived.
The other significant factor in the loss was that Charlie Lindgren failed to make the big saves he needed to in the first period. Per MoneyPuck, he came out of the first period allowing two more goals than expected and that was basically the decider in the game needing overtime. To Lindgren’s credit, he did recover in the final two periods, finishing completely even in goals saved above expected, but it’s no secret that Logan Thompson has vastly outperformed him to start this season.
Ryan Leonard was credited with the secondary assist on Washington’s first goal, his third assist of the season. Leonard has tallied a point in five of his last seven contests (2g-3a–5p in 7 GP).
— Capitals PR (@CapitalsPR) November 1, 2025
Dylan Strome immediately got back on the scoresheet in his return from injury, scoring his third goal of the season. Spencer Carbery didn’t ease him back into the lineup, as he finished with the most ice time among all Capitals forwards (22:13).
Huge, huge minutes for John Carlson (28:04) and Jakob Chychrun (27:21). There are already a ton of miles on those tires this early into the season. Overtime plus a day off today, but I think the Caps really need to monitor those two guys better this season. Rasmus Sandin’s absence is obviously not helping.
Alex Ovechkin won the 65th faceoff of his career in the loss. Ovechkin has a 34 percent win rate in the dot during his 21-season career. Something I found hilarious was that two of his 65 career faceoff wins have come on the penalty kill. Had to have been very early in his career.
Numbers thanks to Hockey-Reference, NaturalStatTrick, and HockeyStatCards.