Caps Spend Sunday in St. Paul
Kuemper injured in Saturday practice, Carlson speaks to media ahead of Caps' Sunday matinee in Minnesota
The Caps embark on their final road trip outside the Eastern time zone when they travel west to St. Paul to take on the Minnesota Wild in a Sunday matinee match. Sunday's game is the Caps' penultimate game of the season against a Western Conference opponent; the Caps host Chicago on Thursday to close the books on their dealings with the opposite conference this season.
And stop me if you've heard this one before, but the Caps are working through some more injury woes. Washington got left wing Sonny Milano (illness) back in its lineup on Friday against the Blues, but lost defenseman Nick Jensen to an upper body injury sustained in the third period of Wednesday's game against the Sabres. Jensen is day-to-day.
Just ahead of their Saturday afternoon flight to Minnesota for Sunday's game, the Caps conducted a noon practice at MedStar Capitals Iceplex. Goaltender Darcy Kuemper didn't make it through that practice; he departed early and is listed as day-to-day with an upper body injury. That ailment sparked a weekend recall from AHL Hershey, as the Caps summoned netminder Zach Fucale from the Bears right around the time they touched down in Minnesota on Saturday afternoon.
"Nobody's healthy in there right now," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "There's always things that are going on, there's always things that you're dealing with. Obviously, he was fine [Friday] night and he came off [during practice] here, so we're examining that right now, the upper body."
Washington enters Sunday's game on the heels of a disappointing 5-2 setback to the St. Louis Blues in the District on Friday night. For the third consecutive game, the Caps fell down 1-0 on the opposition's first shot on goal of the night and they were unable to bounce back, unlike the previous game against Buffalo when they rallied back from a trio of two-goal deficits to claim a 5-4 shootout win.
Once again however, Washington was unable to stack another victory on top of Wednesday's win over the Sabres. The Capitals entered the third period of the Friday game against the Blues looking up at a 4-0 deficit. The Caps never quit; the third period was likely their best of the game as far as generating offense and offensive chances, but it was too little, too late.
"I don't think that first goal was Darcy's fault [Friday] night," says Laviolette. "There are things that we need to do better, and they're part of what we do structurally, and it didn't happen. And right away, you're down 1-0. The [scoring] chances in the first period were 6-4 for us, but we're down 1-0 and it's tough. When that happens, you're behind the eight ball and you're chasing the period, and then ultimately could be chasing the game.
"And then it seemed like it had a little bit of a snowball effect last night. The second one goes in, and it's building. The third one goes in. And all of them, we could have easily done something different and the game could have been tighter."
Since losing defenseman John Carlson to an upper body injury - revealed on Saturday as a skull fracture and a severed temporal artery - in a Dec. 23 game against Winnipeg, the Caps have won 14 of 34 games (14-17-3) and they've been unable to gain or generate any traction in the standings. Washington is 2-10-2 in the games immediately following those 14 victories, and it was in the latter stages of a 10-1-0 run - by far its best stretch of the season - when Carlson was felled by a high hard shot from Jets defenseman Brenden Dillon, a former Caps teammate.
For the last week or so, Carlson has been a partial participant in team practices and morning skates, donning a non-contact sweater to take the ice with his teammates as he works his way back towards game action. He is not quite where he needs to be yet to be cleared, but that date is drawing nearer, and the team's top defenseman could be back in the lineup within the week.
Following Saturday's on-ice session at MedStar Capitals Iceplex, the veteran blueliner spoke with the media for the first time since suffering his injury.
"I feel really good," says Carlson. "I feel rejuvenated. I think I haven't had this much time off over the winter in my life, probably. But I tried to take care of myself, get better, do things that I otherwise wouldn't do, and get ready for coming back."
The fluke injury is similar to those experienced in baseball, where hitters are occasionally unable to get out of the way of a high, rising fastball. Such incidents carry some mental baggage and have caused some careers to decline suddenly and rapidly, in the cases of Tony Conigliaro and Dickie Thon.
Carlson acknowledged the mental hurdle, and he was able to slowly work his way back up to speed in that regard.
"I think early on, you are real tentative," says Carlson of the recover process. "And you start out on your own, too, so you don't really think about anything because everything you can control is pretty simple to deal with, I would say. But you're introducing other guys throughout this time; other guys were practicing with me here and there. And you added more pucks, you added more bodies, more chaos. And certainly, those things come up, and you have to find a way to deal with them and then work through them in the proper manner.
"I know there's one thing in this league: you can't be hesitant about anything. You certainly can't let yourself back on the ice in a real situation if you're dealing with other stuff. It just doesn't work like that."
Carlson missed six games earlier in the season, and he has missed a total of 40 games and counting, so he is likely to have missed half the season by the time he returns. Entering this season, Carlson had missed a total of just 46 games dating back to the outset of the 2010-11 season, his first full season in the NHL. Only four NHL blueliners - Keith Yandle, Gary Suter, Alex Goligoski and Brent Burns.
In 30 games with Carlson this season, the Caps are 18-10-2 and they've outscored the opposition by a combined 98-81 (plus-17). In 40 games without Carlson, Washington is 15-20-5 and it has been outscored by an aggregate 130-108 (minus-22). The Caps give up half a goal per game more - on average - without Carlson in the lineup than with him.
Whenever he's ready, expect Carlson to be reinstalled in the Washington lineup and to jump back into the fire, handling as much of his usual minutes and role as he is capable of handling.
"He looks terrific out there," says Laviolette. "He is flying around, and he looks like a caged dog right now. So we could tell him he's not going to play, but at some point he'll be cleared and he's going to want to play."
And he will.
Despite dealing with its own spate of injuries, the Wild is firmly in a playoff position and it also still has some upward mobility in both the Central Division and Western Conference standings. One of the League's hottest teams at this juncture, the Wild just went over a month without suffering a regulation loss, dating back to a 3-2 setback on home ice at the hands of the Colorado Avalanche on Feb. 15.
That streak came to an end on Saturday afternoon when the Boston Bruins downed the Wild here in Minnesota, 5-2.
Even with Saturday's setback, Minnesota is 11-1-3 since the aforementioned loss to the Avs, and the Wild has yielded just 30 goals in those 15 games, though it has yielded exactly five goals against in each of its last three games, going 1-1-1.
