Dec. 3 vs. San Jose Sharks at SAP Center
Time: 10:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN/Caps Radio Network
Washington Capitals (16-9-2)
San Jose Sharks (13-11-3)
The Caps move into the back half of their four-game road trip and the back end of a set of back-to-back games on Wednesday night in San Jose. Washington brings a five-game winning streak with it to Northern California, and the Capitals have won eight of their last nine games (8-1-0) overall.
Tuesday night in Los Angeles, the Caps never trailed as they forged their fifth straight win, a 3-1 victory over the Kings. Logan Thompson picked up his 12th win of the season with a 23-save effort, Tom Wilson got the scoring started with a power-play goal in the first period and Anthony Beauvillier bagged the game-winner early in the third, converting after brilliant set up plays by Connor McMichael and Alex Ovechkin.
It all added up to two more points for the Capitals, who enter Wednesday’s game with 34 points on the season, tied with Carolina for the most in the Metropolitan Division, though the Hurricanes have played two fewer games.
Washington typically wrangles standings points via its 5-on-5 game, but Tuesday night in Los Angeles, its special teams were equally stellar. The Caps won the special teams battle by going 1-for-2 on the power play and snuffing out both Los Angeles extra man opportunities, and the genesis of Beauvillier’s game-winner was McMichael’s timely blocked shot at the tail end of a carryover penalty killing mission early in the third.
“I think we're playing really connected,” says Beauvillier of his team’s hot streak. “I think we're just breaking the puck out a little bit better, a little cleaner, and obviously executing a little bit better in the [offensive] zone, and I think [we’re] capitalizing on our chances.
“I think our confidence and our swagger is such a big part of our group. And when you're not getting results – which we weren't necessarily earlier in the year – I think that was kind of creeping in on us a little bit. But we're very confident in our ability to play, and we feel like we can beat any team on any given night.”
Last month, the Caps embarked on a four-game road trip, one in which they played that quartet of contests over a more leisurely span of eight nights, all in the Eastern Time Zone. Washington went 1-3-0 on that trip, though each of the three losses were winnable games going into the third period.
The current journey is more condensed; the trip began in New York on Sunday afternoon and was followed by a cross-continent flight of more than six hours in duration as the Caps flew to Los Angeles for Tuesday’s date with the Kings. When it’s all said and done, the Caps will play four games in six nights on this trip, and they’ll jump right back in action with their fifth game in eight nights soon after returning to Washington, their fifth game in eight nights.
A scheduled practice for Monday was wisely tabled in favor of a needed off day. Washington will be a third of the way through its regular season schedule on Wednesday night in San Jose, and all 32 NHL teams are feeling the effects of this season’s condensed schedule so NHL players can participate in the 2026 Winter Olympic Games this February in Italy.
“It definitely has impacted [us],” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “Way less practice time, which has been a little bit frustrating. [You’ve] got to pick and choose your meeting times, the length of them. When you get them in, you’ve got to get a little bit unique with your planning of – I won't say correct things, but – how you can work on things without necessarily coming to the rink, and without necessarily going onto the ice with your group.
“So that's been challenging with the condensed schedule, but we're trying to navigate through it, and we'll make sure that we're trying to do as much as we can as a coaching staff to plan accordingly and find ways to continue to build our game and continue to get better through the season, even though everybody's dealing with the same challenges.”
There are more back-to-back games and more instances of three games in four nights, five in eight, six in 10, and it’s been challenging for teams to keep players healthy with less recovery time. Many teams, as the Caps did early on this trip, are finding rest to be a better weapon than practice.
“To use it as an excuse or to use it as a crutch,” says Carbery, “every single team – all 32 of them – are dealing with the exact same schedule challenges, so you might as well get used to it, get comfortable with it, and find a way to have success in it, because some teams will. I promise you there'll be a team that's winning games in a condensed schedule, and that's what I'd ideally like to be us.”
Since they stumbled out to an 0-4-2 start to the season, the Sharks have been one of the uplifting stories of the first third of the 2025-26 season. Behind their budding young superstar Macklin Celebrini, the Sharks have gone13-7-1 over a 21-game span and they’re in the mix for a Western Conference playoff berth.
The Sharks have been good on home ice (9-4-3) and their total of a dozen regulation and overtime wins is second only to Anaheim among the eight Pacific Division occupants, the top six of which – including San Jose – are clustered within six points of one another heading into Wednesday night’s slate of NHL activity.
San Jose carries a three-game home winning streak into Wednesday’s game, a streak in which it has doubled up the three vanquished foes by a combined count of 12-6. Most recently, the Sharks doubled down on the visiting Utah Mammoth by a 6-3 score on Monday night. With that win, the Sharks hopped over the slumping Mammoth in the Western Conference standings.
