Sept. 21 vs. Boston Bruins at TD Garden
Time: 5:00 p.m.
TV: MNMT
Radio: 106.7 THE FAN, Caps Radio 24/7
Washington Capitals (51-22-9)
Boston Bruins (33-39-10)
The Caps open their six-pack of preseason tune-up tilts on Sunday afternoon in Boston when they face the Bruins in the first of six exhibitions scattered across a leisurely span of 14 days and nights. While the Caps must face the Bruins after just three days’ worth of camp practices, Washington will have just one preseason tilt across the next six nights following Sunday, and that’s a “home” game against Philadelphia at Hershey’s Giant Center on Thursday night.
Washington’s preseason opener features an unsurprisingly youthful roster, peppered with players who have been part of one or both of Hershey’s consecutive Calder Cup crowns in 2023 and 2024. There could be as many as half a dozen members of those recent Calder Cup champs taking the ice for Washington for Sunday’s exhibition opener. The Caps’ Sunday lineup also features a few players who are about to embark upon the first full season of their pro hockey careers in 2025-26; there will likely be three of them suiting up on Sunday.
The first preseason game or two can be messy and ugly to series; both sides typically dress inexperienced lineups, younger players may have some jitters, and veterans can be shaking off rust and seeking to re-establish their timing. All of that must be factored into any evaluations after the fact.
“It’s tough because you’re always balancing the scrambly play, which you’re going to expect; it’s going to be there,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “But you would like to see some remnants of the things that we’ve done this week and talked about. And then the other two pieces that I look for is a competitiveness, and then show your skill set. Like, what do you do that separates you? What’s going to be your MO or bread and butter at the NHL level? And try to put that on display at various points in the game.
“So there’s three things inside there that you would like to see, and then you evaluate that postgame, and was this player able to do any of those things, or all of them?”
Hendrix Lapierre, the Caps’ first-round choice (22nd overall) in the 2020 NHL Draft, is participating in his fourth full training camp with the Caps, and is penciled in Sunday’s lineup in Boston. Lapierre finished the 2023-24 season with Washington, where he put together a strong finish with the Caps that helped them nail down an improbable playoff berth on the final night of the regular season. Over the final third of that season, Lapierre amassed six goals and nine assists for 15 points in 26 games. During that stretch, only Dylan Strome (25 points), Alex Ovechkin (23) and John Carlson (20) had more points than Lapierre.
As a member of both Hershey Calder Cup championship squads, Lapierre had consecutive short summers, and he wasn’t as sharp as he or the team would have liked last year at this time. Lapierre was returned to AHL Hershey midway through last season, the final season of his entry level contract.
The personable 23-year-old is today in a heated battle with several teammates for one or two openings among the forward ranks, and if he doesn’t crack the opening night roster, Lapierre would require waivers to return to Hershey. He spent a lot of time reflecting this summer and re-watching his games from last season, as well as a lot of time in the gym.
“Obviously, I don’t have a ton of experience in pro hockey, but I’ve seen, I’ve learned, I’ve made mistakes, I’ve done some good things,” says Lapierre.” So throughout all that, you kind of figure out what it takes, and when you get to camp and it’s your fourth or fifth camp, it’s not the same feeling as your first or second camp.
“Obviously last year, I don’t have any excuses for my camp; it just wasn’t good enough. But I know that, okay, last year, I didn’t do this or this right, but I can just focus on working extremely hard and showing everyone how bad I want it.”
To Carbery’s point, Lapierre wants to make a point of showcasing his competitiveness and grit in one-on-one battles.
“I watched my games from last year, and I think that’s probably the most important thing, just the hockey side of it,” says Lapierre. “I know what I can accomplish, I know what I can do, I just have to put it on display.
“I worked on being a little more gritty in those one-on-one battles, being a shooting threat. A lot of stuff that goes into it, but in general it’s just about being a little tougher, and I want to prove that in camp. I want to prove that I can be someone who is tough to play against. Obviously, I have creativity and speed and stuff, but if I can bring a little more of that to my game, I think it’s very beneficial. I worked a lot on just every day making sure I wasn’t cheating it, even though it was a summer practice or whatever, and having the right habits.”
On Sunday in Boston, Lapierre and 19 other Caps will put their best foot forward against the Bruins, seeking to shine in the eyes of those that matter most. And the evaluators know that as they do the evaluating, some nuance is needed.
“You have to take it all in and take it with a grain of salt,” says Carbery of evaluating players’ performance in preseason games. “A lot of us coaches … you play at home, you play a veteran-heavy team, and then the opposing team brings a lot younger team, and then vice versa, and then vice versa.
“So you just have to take everything with a grain of salt. Like I said, you’re trying to evaluate those games individually, collectively. Was the player able to demonstrate some of their skill set, what they’re going to be able to do, or what you want them to do at the NHL level? Were they able to take some of the information that we’ve gone over this week? It is trick and you’ve got to make sure that you’re not over-analyzing a game where you just don’t know what the opposition was bringing or doing, or what their lineup looked like, and so forth.”
At the outset of last season, Boston was seen as one of the leading teams in the Eastern Conference and the Caps were mostly viewed as a middle-of-the-pack team that might struggle to make the playoffs after barely making the postseason in 2023-24. But the opposite occurred; the Caps rode a strong start to a first-place finish in the East while Boston struggled mightily out of the gates and made two coaching changes, one last November and another over the offseason when Marco Sturm – briefly a Capital at the end of his excellent playing career – was hired as the B’s newest bench boss.
The 2024-25 Bruins missed the postseason and finished in the basement of the Atlantic Division, their first last-place finish since 2006-07. The proud Original Six franchise has avoided a full rebuild for years, but it may be on the cusp of one today. The B’s cleaned house at the trade deadline, picking up some potentially prime assets in the process.
Aside from its third-round choice in 2027, Boston owns each of its choices in the first four rounds of the next three NHL Drafts. The Bruins also have additional first-round picks in 2026 and 2027, and an additional fourth in 2026.
All three of those acquired selections came from within the Atlantic Division. The B’s got Fraser Minten and a 2026 first from the Leafs for Brandon Carlo, and they acquired Florida’s first-round selection in 2027. The additional fourth-rounder came from Tampa Bay in a draft floor offer this past June; the Lightning received Boston’s fourth-rounder in 2025.
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