"We want to make sure that the young players are rested as well when they go into the games, to give themselves the best chance to show what they can do," says Laviolette. "I've gone into training camps - like an eight-game training camp - before and you want to see the young players and see the young players, so you play them in seven out of eight games, and by the seventh game they're gassed.
"What we're trying to do is put them in a position where they're fresh and they feel like they have good energy and good pop, so that they can show exactly what they want to do. There will be changes to the lineup come [Friday], and Lappy will be back in there. He will get an opportunity to show what he can do."
It's also no accident that McMichael will be centering for veterans Sheary and Oshie tonight.
"Almost by design," jokes Laviolette. "They're both really smart players. They're players that communicate well. They bring a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge to a young player that could help them in practices, before a game, during a game and after a game. They're a couple of players that you would want to see flanked around a young player."
McMichael made his regular season NHL debut in January, getting into one game against Buffalo. But his linemates are ready and willing to help him navigate the learning curve at the game's highest level.
"I think with a young player like that who was obviously a high [draft] pick, you just want to make him comfortable," says Sheary. "You don't want to do anything that's too out of the norm for him, we want to let him play his game. Osh and I will play our game around him, and hopefully we will complement each other well.
"I think it's just a matter of a lot of communication and just helping him out when he needs it and letting him do his thing when that's called for, too. I like what I've seen from him so far. I obviously haven't gotten to play with him too much, but he's got a lot of skill, he can shoot the puck and he sees the ice well so I'm excited for that opportunity."
Lookin' Back - From the looks of things at this fall's camp, the Caps are at least penciling Fehervary into their defensive depth chart on the left side. But there are a lot of moving parts on the Washington blueline right now, and the Caps' coaching staff is taking a look at a lot of the various pairings and permutations available to them on the team's backline.
In addition to helping determine which pairs make the most sense once the season starts, the process of window shopping for optimal defensive pairings can be a plus for the blueliners themselves, just to give them a chance to play with a variety of different players.
Last season was Trevor van Riemsdyk's first campaign with the Caps, and though he played both sides of the ice over the course of his 20 NHL games in '20-21, he skated less than six minutes worth of 5-on-5 time with John Carlson, his blueline partner for tonight's tilt in Boston.
