Caps Get Back to Work

According to the original NHL schedule, the Caps were supposed to be in Montreal on this Tuesday night, facing the Canadiens in the opener of a three-game road trip and in their first road game of calendar 2021. But the game was postponed more than a week ago; the Habs are currently unable to have fans in the building so the game will be rescheduled for a later date when the doors can be opened to welcome fans.

As for the Caps, they took Monday as a day off since there was no need to fly to Montreal. And while their initial itinerary had them flying from Montreal to St. Louis on Wednesday morning and then practicing in the Gateway City on Thursday afternoon, the Caps will instead be home here in the D.C. area, conducting a pair of full team practices today and on Wednesday before they depart for St. Louis on Thursday afternoon for a set of back-to-back road games this weekend. The Caps face the Wild in St. Paul on Saturday night.
Throughout the season to date, the Caps have dealt with a number of injuries, illnesses and absences from their lineup, and that's been particularly true for the last month when several players were out at varying times because they were in the NHL's COVID-19 protocol. Those absences combined with a few postponements and a lengthier-than-usual holiday break have kept some players away from the ice while others have continued to play and practice.
Players such as Alex Ovechkin, John Carslon, Dmitry Orlov and Carl Hagelin who have played in all 34 games to date have been going at the same speed for the better part of three months now, while several other players have had varying amounts of downtime at various times.
Evgeny Kuznetsov had played in every game before he went into protocol in mid-December. T.J. Oshie had been in and out of the lineup a couple of times because of injuries before he went into protocol days after Kuznetsov did so. Nicklas Backstrom missed the first 28 games of the season while rehabbing a hip ailment, and after finally playing his first game of the season in Chicago on Dec. 15, he went into protocol before he could play his second game.
Players like Nic Dowd, Garnet Hathaway and Trevor van Riemsdyk who were among the earliest group of Caps players to go into protocol came out and played one or two games before the League announced its extended pause, so they were suddenly shut down after just starting to get back on the ice and ramp up their conditioning levels.
With Tuesday morphing from game day on the road to practice day at home, Caps coach Peter Laviolette had high hopes of using practices this week as a bit of a mini training camp/system refresher course. Laviolette has a number of players who are "trying to catch a moving train" right now, to borrow from the coach's book of phrases. He would like them to be chasing the train at the same speed.
"We're going to use that week the best we can," said Laviolette over the weekend. "We're probably going to be off on Monday, but that leads into a couple of really good practices to go back like we did seven days ago when we were able to get after it. Nick Backstrom was back on the ice [following return from protocol], [and we were] going over the forecheck, going over the offensive zone play and the details of defensive zone coverage.
"We can take those two days and really kind of make it a little bit more like training camp; put some sprints up and down the ice, work on the conditioning, work on the battle level and the pace. And then maybe make a decision on [Thursday], the day that we leave for St. Louis. Some guys come, in some guys just take the day off based on the minutes and the guys that have played consistently all year."
The Caps have been playing well since the outset of the season, and teams that are rolling along nicely are always reluctant to shut down.
"I think it goes both ways," says Caps winger Conor Sheary. "I think the way we're playing right now we're - knock on wood - starting to get healthy, so we're getting our lineup back. And if you're playing well, you never want to sit out.
"But at the same time, when guys have nagging injuries or guys that play a lot of minutes - or more minutes than maybe they're used to - I think we can use these times to our advantage and rest up before the next trip, because then we go right into a back-to-back. These are kind of becoming the norm with the postponed games - these longer breaks - so we're learning how to deal with them. But at the end of the day, it can be beneficial if used the right way."
This past Saturday, Backstrom was asked whether the postponement of the Montreal game might be beneficial for the Caps, given the number of players whose conditioning levels might vary from those players who have been in the lineup all season.
"If you would have asked me that three months ago, I think I would have said 'Keep playing,'" says Backstrom. "But the way that this COVID situation is, I think it might be good for the guys coming back to get a couple of practices in. I think it's just good for us."
Alas, roughly 24 hours after saying those words, Backstrom - and Oshie as well - missed Sunday's game with a non-COVID related illness. And when the Caps did reconvene for practice at MedStar Capitals Iceplex today, both Backstrom and Oshie - plus forward Connor McMichael - were absent from practice because of that illness, the same illness that kept Lars Eller out of the lineup on Friday in Detroit.
Backstrom had a two-week gap between his first and second game of the season, and if he is able to suit up on Friday in St. Louis, he'll have had a week between his third and fourth games of the season.
If the news of the non-COVID illness now apparently coursing its way through the Washington room wasn't bad enough, all you had to do was wait for practice to start. Both Orlov and goaltender Ilya Samsonov departed the session with injuries before it was over, and neither returned.
Laviolette addressed the media after Monday's practice, but he did so before receiving any updates from the Caps' medical staff on the condition of Orlov or Samsonov. We'll know more about their respective conditions tomorrow. As always, the Caps will hope for the best but will be prepared for whatever set of circumstances awaits them on Wednesday morning.
This is the way of the world now for the Caps and the other 31 NHL clubs. Each day brings fresh challenges.
"I think if you look at the last year and a half, you'll see no schedule is set in stone and there are a lot of things that you can't anticipate," says Hathaway. "But the mentality that we have around the room is that you have to you have to be ready for anything. And you're not sure what could come around in the next week or month or for the rest of the season.
"You look at last year and we went through a lot, a lot of things you couldn't predict. And this year has turned out to have kind of the same thing. But I think we're rolling with it, and there's a lot of different reasons why we're continuing to be successful. I think one of those is just preparing for any possibility."
While the Caps still weren't able to practice with a full group on Tuesday, they remained on the ice for more than an hour in a spirited - if undermanned - session.
"Just work, compete, pace, speed - guys competing against each other," says Laviolette of the first day of his two-day "mini camp." "A lot of guys - not all the guys - have been out for a long time. There are systems mixed in between it, whether it be forecheck or offensive zone play. We've got time to work on things and go over things. It's just parts of systems along with parts of compete and speed."
They'll do it again on Wednesday, hoping to have more - rather than fewer - players available for practice when they do.