The NHL’s 2026-27 schedule gives Capitals fans a little more hockey to chew on, but it doesn’t exactly hand Alex Ovechkin a soft landing.
Washington is one of the teams getting two extra games in the league’s return to an 84-game season, and the slate also brings more Monday matinees. But for Ovechkin, who may be in his final season, the setup is rough: for the second straight year, he will not finish the regular season at home.
The Capitals open against the defending Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes in Raleigh. After that, they head to Tampa to face the Lightning on October 3rd, a game that comes with the awkward note that John Carlson now plays there.
Washington’s home opener arrives on October 7th in D.C. against Sidney Crosby and the Penguins. The regular season ends with a road trip to Philadelphia, where the Caps will face the Flyers.
If Ovechkin does decide to hang them up next summer, that means his final regular-season opener would come in Raleigh and his last regular-season game ever would be in Philly.
Washington will also play 14 back-to-backs in 2026-27, which trails only the Penguins’ 15. That number is hardly unfamiliar territory for the Capitals, who have averaged just about 14 since the 2005-06 season in the post-lockout era. The schedule’s geography helps make that possible, with Northeast and mid-Atlantic travel making it easier to string together home-and-home sets against teams like the Flyers, Devils, and the New York clubs.
There’s also a broader gripe with the way the league handled the expanded slate. The NHL didn’t start the season a week earlier or push it a week later to make room for the added games, so the extra two contests were simply packed into the same stretch of time as the 82-game schedule.
Hockey players are elite athletes, but the grind is still the grind, and the idea here is that older players like Ovechkin could use the occasional extra day off. The suggestion from the source is that commissioner Gary Bettman could borrow from the NFL’s approach, trim a preseason game or two, and get the season rolling a week sooner.
And then there’s the part of the schedule that stands out most for fans who like a little daytime chaos: those Monday afternoon games. The NHL says it wants to grow its international audience, and these 1 p.m.
EST puck drops line up as 7 p.m. in Europe and 8 p.m. in Russia. For fans on both sides of the Atlantic, it’s an easy excuse to sneak away from work and watch hockey in the middle of the day.
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