Forty Days And Forty Nights – Forty days after he was felled with a fractured fibula in a Nov. 18 game in Utah, Caps captain Alex Ovechkin will return to the Washington lineup for Saturday night’s date with the Maple Leafs in Toronto. The 39-year-old Ovechkin, now in his 20th NHL season, missed 16 games, nearly tripling his longest previous continuous absence from the lineup (six games) in his career.
With 15 goals in 18 games – including five goals in the last two games he played – Ovechkin was off to the best start of his career when he went down. He was slated to miss 4-6 weeks and is back in game action two days shy of six weeks since the injury.
“Spending lots of time in the gym, [riding] bikes,” says Ovechkin of his extended absence. “All the staff did a great job helping me recover, the training staff and the guys who work at the gym. It was hard. Thanks for the support to my family and fans.”
His teammates more than held their own without him in the lineup, but they’re every bit as happy to have him back, even though he was more “present” than most injured players are while recovering.
“He was still around, it’s kind of funny,” says Caps winger Tom Wilson. “I’ve never seen anything like it. You’d see him around a corner, kind of smiling while listening to a pregame speech, or if the guys were doing something pregame or postgame, he would kind of be lingering around; he didn’t want to miss a thing. It’s pretty remarkable. He just loves coming to the rink, and he has put in a ton of time and effort. And he has been there for every guy; even though he was out, he was helping us along.”
“We talked for days about that after he got hurt; you can't replace him,” says Caps defenseman John Carlson. “You can't replace his personality, you can't replace his presence, all that stuff, his on-ice abilities and his scoring. There's no one like him. I’ve played with a lot of guys; there's not one person like him. I'm sure he'll say the same thing; when he's around, he's still himself. But it's a little different when you're not playing. No matter how much you try to manufacture [presence] like he did; he wanted to be around the guys, he wanted to stay close, and it was meaningful that he did that. But now you can see in the last week or so of practicing, he's starting to get unlocked a little bit, and it's fun to see.”
And with 48 games still remaining in the regular season, it will also be fun to see how much of a dent he can make in the 26 goal difference that separates him (868) from Wayne Gretzky (894) for the top spot on the NHL’s all-time goals ledger.
“It's incredible, the magnitude of what's going on around us,” says Carlson of his longtime teammate’s ongoing chase of Gretzky’s record. “And then you see him rolling in and having fun, just like a kid that’s going out for recess and it's a fun feeling. I mean, it's fun for me. I'm sure the young guys that haven’t been in the NHL too long, their heads are spinning when he's in the room. It's great, it's great to have around and it's a great achievement he's chasing. And he's got his biggest fans next to him.”
Ovechkin’s return is well-timed; the Caps have been scuffling of late, both at 5-on-5 and on the power play. It’s hoped that his return can return the Caps’ lines to something similar to how they looked in early to mid-November, though Lars Eller (illness) is still sidelined.
“That's what we're hoping for,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “We’re going to move the power play around a little bit so it'll look a little bit different; so we'll see how that looks tonight. Obviously, it'll be an adjustment for the four other guys and him, because we haven't gone with the look that we'll go with tonight this year.
“But just his presence and being back in, hopefully we can get some more guys going. We felt like we started real hot from a goal scoring standpoint. Guys were on rolls, they were really on – quote, unquote – heaters, and now that's sort of dipped. We don't have a lot of guys that are that are feeling it right now. And hopefully he can jump start some of that, where guys – from a point production, goal scoring standpoint – are able to heat back up.”
Everybody Get Up – Washington was 13-4-1 when Ovechkin went down, and despite losing each of the first two games it played without Ovechkin – the first two consecutive losses the club suffered this season – it forged a more than respectable 10-5-1 record in his absence. At the time of the November injury, the Caps had a 26-29-4 record in all games missed by Ovechkin for any reason. They’ve managed to raise that mark to 36-34-5.
“I think the depth of our team,” offers Carlson, when asked why the ’24-25 Caps were able to play so well without their captain. “The way that we're structured now – and obviously, he had the most goals at that time – we were getting plenty more scoring from everybody else at the time, so that was obviously a positive. And I feel like the effect game wise, a lot of players stepped up and had huge early roles in the year, and with him being out, I think that continued.
“It’s easy for guys to step up and either produce more or fill in different roles than they're used to; but you never know how it's going to go. Sometimes, guys can put too much pressure on themselves, and sometimes they never look back. Maybe this last little run we haven't scored quite as much, but from an actual hockey perspective, I think we're still playing really well. We'd obviously like a little more scoring, but all the other things in terms of creating and all that have been really good.”
With 14 points (four goals, 10 assists), P-L Dubois led Washington in scoring during Ovechkin’s absence. Wilson and Aliaksei Protas had seven goals each to pace the Caps in that department. Wilson scored four of the Caps’ 13 power-play goals without Ovechkin, leading the team. And with 13 points (four goals, nine assists) in the 16 games Ovechkin missed, Jakob Chychrun led Washington defensemen in scoring during The Great Eight’s extended absence.
Although the scoring has slowed, the defense, the goaltending and the penalty killing have helped Washington make up for the recent offensive downfall.
“Everyone's got to step up, especially when you're losing a guy with that many goals, and especially on the season, and that many points,” says Caps center Dylan Strome. “I thought Tom [Wilson] did a great job. I thought [Dubois] did a great job. A lot of guys stepped up in key roles; [Jakob Chychrun] was great when he come into that power play. It's tough whena huge key contributor goes down, and you don't really know how long it's going to be until he's back. But thought a lot of guys did a good job of stepping up and filling the void of O being gone. It will be nice to get him back in here, too.”
Most importantly, the Capitals maintained their position near the top of the Eastern Conference standings while their captain was missing roughly a fifth of the season, all at once.
“I was overall pleased,” says Carbery. “I felt like at the beginning of him being out, it took us a little bit – I don't know if you get comfortable, but – to truly understand, how is this going to look without him and some [line] combination stuff? And so I felt like at the beginning, it took us a few games, but [since] then I thought we've played pretty solid.
“I will say – and I don't know if this is [Ovechkin] being out – I've talked a few times about this at various points of his being out of our lineup, that the scoring and lack thereof at times was noticeable. And you could point to that as us just regressing back to the mean of the hot start that we had. But also, I do think there is a little bit of a piece there that when he's on the ice, and he's on our bench and he's taking shifts, there’s always that potential that he's going to shoot a puck on the back of the net. And I do think as a teammate, linemate, and someone that dresses for the Washington Capitals, that makes you feel good your own self, because you always feel like he's going to find a way to score that night.
“So that I have noticed, but results wise, and us finding a way through that stretch and winning a lot of tight hockey games going into some difficult environments, I look at the trip down to Florida on the Mentors’ Trip, and I thought those two games were really critical games for our team, and we played really well to get four points on that trip. And there's some other parts in that, but I've been pleased.”
Ovechkin returns in Toronto, a building where he has had a fair amount of success over the years. He has scored 24 goals in his 29 games in this building, including a pair of hat tricks on Jan 22, 2011 and Nov. 25, 2017.
“The boys do a great job without me, and I don’t know, they’re playing well right now,” sways Ovechkin. “So what kind of game I’m going represent right now [I’m not sure]. Practice is one thing, but in the games it’s a different speed and a different intensity. You just have to be smart and play the right way.”
In The Nets – Logan Thompson gets the crease for the Capitals on the front end of this set of back-to-backs in Toronto. Thompson’s most recent start was a 25-save effort against the Kings in Washington last Sunday. He has permitted two or fewer goals against in 10 of his last 13 starts, going 9-2-2 with a 2.15 GAA and a .924 save pct.
Lifetime against the Leafs, Thompson is 2-1-1 in four appearances (all starts) with a 3.13 GAA and an .891 save pct.
After playing on Stanley Cup championship squads in Pittsburgh in each of his first two seasons in the NHL and winning 97 games in his first four seasons, Matt Murray ran into hard times and injuries thereafter. He is 30-33-5 since leaving Pittsburgh, and after appearing in fewer than 30 games for three straight seasons, Murray didn’t play in the NHL at all last season.
One of the high moments of this season was his 6-3 win over the Sabres in Buffalo on Dec. 20 in his first NHL start in nearly 21 months. Tonight, Murray gets his second start of the season and will face the Capitals for the first time in almost three years, since he suffered a 3-2 overtime loss in Washington on Jan. 22, 2022 while he was with Ottawa. Ovechkin scored the 758th and 759th goals of his career that night, and Nicklas Backstrom won it for Washington in overtime.
Lifetime against the Capitals, Murray is 8-6-1 in 15 appearances (all starts) with a 3.63 GAA and an .885 save pct.
All Lined Up – Here’s how we expect the Caps and the Maple Leafs might look on Saturday night in Toronto:
WASHINGTON
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 17-Strome, 21-Protas
24-McMichael, 80-Dubois, 43-Wilson
88-Mangiapane, 29-Lapierre, 13-Vrana
22-Duhaime, 26-Dowd, 16-Raddysh
Defensemen
38-Sandin, 74-Carlson
42-Fehervary, 3-Roy
6-Chychrun, 57-van Riemsdyk
Goaltenders
48-Thompson
79-Lindgren
Extras
27-Alexeyev
52-McIlrath
Out/Injured
15-Milano (upper body)
19-Backstrom (hip)
20-Eller (illness)
77-Oshie (back)
TORONTO
Forwards
67-Pacioretty, 91-Tavares, 16-Marner
23-Knies, 23-Holmberg, 88-Nylander
74-McMann, 11-Domi, 89-Robertson
18-Lorentz, 64-Kampf, 24-Dewar
Defensemen
44-Rielly, 51-Myers
22-McCabe, 8-Tanev
95-Ekman-Larsson, 2-Benoit
Goaltenders
30-Murray
60-Woll
Extras
25-Timmins
75-Reaves
Out/Injured
19-Jarnkrok (lower body)
28-Hakanpaa (lower body)
34-Matthews (upper body)
41-Stolarz (lower body)
