After a 146-day break (but who’s counting), the Washington Capitals are back on the ice for a meaningful hockey game again — and frankly, how dare they make me wait that long. So selfish.

The Capitals will take on the Boston Bruins in Game 1 of the regular season tonight, and the Caps’ lineup that will chase Lord Stanley’s Cup this year looks mightily similar to the one that fell in five games to the Carolina Hurricanes in the second round of the 2025 playoffs.

New to the team is Justin Sourdif, a minor-leaguer grinder who was acquired from the Florida Panthers for two draft picks (management really liked him). Hendrix Lapierre is back at third-line center after an incredible preseason. Bravo, Hendrix. And that unfamiliar, handsome guy in the press box? Well, that’s defenseman Declan Chisholm, a depth acquisition from the Minnesota Wild.

History could be in the air tonight, too, as Alex Ovechkin, who is now playing in his 21st career NHL season, is a hat trick away from the 900-goal milestone, which is exactly how he got to 800.

Now, for some of you, I know you weren’t as in-tune with the blog as you usually are over the summer — we see the hits. Tsk tsk. We’re shaking our heads at you right now. Anyways, because we’re cool, we prepared you a nifty primer for the season opener so you can see all the important stuff you missed over the offseason and training camp. Get a clickin’ and pushin’.

Puck drop for Capitals-Bruins is at 7:30 pm on TNT. No Joe B. and Locker, but we will persevere. By the way, we’re in this.

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More Info

Lines
Washington Capitals

Beauvillier

Lapierre

Leonard

Boston Bruins

Geekie

E. Lindholm

Pastrnak

Zacha

Mittelstadt

Arvidsson

Khusnutdinov

Kuraly

Kastelic

Tunnel idoiotcy

1st Period

Bob McDonald and Caleb Green sing the national anthem. Beautifully, might I add.

Puck is dropped. Protas-Strome-Ovechkin and Chychrun-TVR get the start for the Capitals.

Seven seconds into the game we already have a whistle. Alex Ovechkin accidentally chipped the puck into the Bruins’ bench nearly taking out Marco Sturm, their head coach and Ovi’s former teammate with the Capitals. Ovi was laughing and appeared to apologize.

David Pastrnak to the box at 1:51 for hooking Tom Wilson. Capitals going to their first power play.

Capitals don’t score. Notably, Ovi didn’t stay on for the entire power play.

Bruins almost score on themselves at the 5:10 mark. Jeremy Swayman stops a redirect by Hampus Lindholm that squeaks through his pads.

More on the Vault Suites here.

Trevor van Riemsdyk to the box for interference on Mark Kastelic at 6:46. Bruins to their first power play.

A lot of feeling out in the first 13 minutes. Both teams combined only have six shots on goal — three each.

Nic Dowd draws a tripping penalty on Sean Kuraly at 13:06. Caps back to the power play.

Ovi gets one 92 MPH one-timer off but it misses the mark.

Caps don’t score.

Henri Jokiharju to the box for cross-checking against Brandon Duhaime at 19:13. This is the Capitals third power play of the period.

Lindholm trips Wilson knee first into the boards. He’s okay but looked mighty uncomfortable at first.

At intermission: The score is tied 0-0. The Capitals outshot the Bruins 6 to 4 but Boston heavily out-attempted them 13 to 4 at five-on-five.

Intermission time!
A cute little ice resurfacer going to side to side like Scooby Doo

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