Caps Start Truncated Camp

At 9:30 on Monday morning, Caps coach Peter Laviolette led his team onto the ice for the first time since he was hired in mid-September. The Caps are a veteran team and Laviolette is a seasoned and experienced coach, but the first practice of a new season with a new coach made Monday's session a little more special.

"I think for all of us, it was a very emotional day," says Caps captain Alex Ovechkin. "We go back on the ice together [for the first time] since the last playoff game. To see new faces, to see new coaches, it's an emotional time. Of course, you just want to do something special to show you're ready for the season, but always the first day at this camp you're a little bit nervous because you were waiting for this day so long, and here it goes. I think both for the team and the coaching staff, it was a very emotional day."

Laviolette has been at the helm of four other NHL clubs over the past two decades. Now, he takes the reins of the Capitals, and he has a shortened training camp in which to get acquainted and accustomed to his new players, and in which to get them prepared for the upcoming campaign.
"I think your gears are running a little bit more than usual," says the Caps coach of that first day on the ice. "It's almost like there's a fear when you go home that maybe you didn't get everything done, or you didn't get in what you're supposed to get in, or there's so much to get in in such a short period of time - not just my thoughts and what I believe on the game, but things that maybe we don't change, [like] faceoff plays, just reminders going over them. There are so many different faceoff plays: offensively, defensively, the three zones, the power plays, the penalty kills, the extra man attackers - there's so many things that you want to touch on. And the time is limited."
Washington's camp roster was split into two groups - one in the morning and the other in the afternoon -- for Monday's session, and that will be the norm this week except on scrimmage days (Thursday and Sunday). Only one player from the Caps' training camp roster was not present for Monday's opening session: newly signed defenseman Zdeno Chara.
"Right now he's still quarantining," says Laviolette of Chara. "And when he comes out [of quarantine] he's going to have to have some physicals and go through a process.
"I don't have an exact timeline right now, but I would say within a couple of days - a day or two - you'll probably see Chara on the ice. There's no specific time yet, but it'll be shortly. He's going to come out of quarantine if he continues to test negative, and we'll get him the proper physicals that he needs, and then he'll be eligible to come on the ice and join us."

That first day of training camp has a similar feel to the first day of school. There are some new classmates, some old ones who've moved on, and some new teachers. School picture day and physical examinations were conducted on Sunday, and Monday's sessions are the first of just nine days on the ice before the Caps shuffle off to Buffalo for their season opener against the Sabres on Jan. 14.
A typical NHL training camp runs for roughly three and a half weeks and contains anywhere from 6-9 preseason games. This Caps camp will only last a week and a half, and there will be no preseason games, just a couple intrasquad scrimmages. The Caps will have a lone off day during the brief camp; they'll have this Friday away from the rink.
The Caps and the other 30 NHL clubs will have the tall task of getting ready for the upcoming season without benefit of any exhibition tune-ups, all while staying healthy and Covid-free. And the Capitals have the added burden of picking up the nuances of Laviolette's system.
Time is short and there's a new sheriff in town, so the tempo and pace of Monday's practice was notably high.
"We had some meetings, and [Laviolette] wants us to play fast and play quick," says Caps center Nicklas Backstrom. "I think he was setting the tone pretty good in the first practice. He wants to play fast, and that's how we practice. Going forward, I'm sure it will be the same. We all know he is a well-respected coach around the league and we're lucky to have him here."
Tuesday and Wednesday's formats will be identical, and the team will scrimmage on Thursday. In Monday's session, the ostensible varsity squad took the ice in the morning while the afternoon group was composed of mostly prospects and hopefuls, those who are likely to populate the Caps' "taxi squad," a group of four to six non-rostered players who will travel and practice with the team.
In between those two Monday sessions, Laviolette noted that there could be some movement between the groups as camp wears on.
"There'll be a little bit of movement in camp, but not too much," says Laviolette. "We're going to take a look at a few things; there might be a defenseman that shifts, or it could be a goaltender that shifts, it could be a forward that shifts. But for the most part, we've got a pretty good handle on where we're at."
There weren't many changes to the look of Washington's varsity group on Monday. The top six forwards remained the same, and Lars Eller centered the third line with newcomer Conor Sheary and Richard Panik. Nic Dowd manned the middle of the fourth line with Carl Hagelin and Garnet Hathaway.
On the blueline, Dmitry Orlov and John Carlson comprised the top pairing, and Brenden Dillon and Justin Schultz made up the second unit. Jonas Siegenthaler was paired with Nick Jensen, and Martin Fehervary skated alongside Trevor van Riemsdyk.
Once Chara joins the pack, there will be some movement to the blueline group.
"When it comes to our players and training camp and what we're trying to get out of it," says Laviolette, "we thought it would be best to put them together and go to work right away. With regard to the lines, I think a lot of it is familiar. There might be some changes out there that we're looking at and thinking about, so I don't think we should write them down in pen just yet. But when we start, we have to have a starting point somewhere. And so that's what we started with."
For the first time since 2007, the Caps' opening day of training camp did not include goaltender Braden Holtby, who signed with Vancouver as an unrestricted free agent on Oct. 9. Holtby holds most of Washington's goaltending records, and he is the guys who finally backstopped the team to its first Stanley Cup title in 2018.
Like Holtby, Caps defenseman John Carlson joined the Washington organization in the 2008 NHL Draft, and the two were teammates at both AHL Hershey and in Washington for more than a decade, winning championships together at both levels.

"It's definitely weird," admits Carlson of Holtby's absence. "Whether it's Hershey or here or training camps, we've had a long run together, and yeah, it's different, it's weird, Especially for the past eight or nine years, there's been a lot of games that we've both been playing in. As a friend - and obviously he is an amazing goalie as well - it is different."
Ilya Samsonov is Holtby's heir apparent in the nets in D.C., and he was a full participant in Monday's opening session, showing no ill effects from the upper body injury that sidelined him for the entirety of Washington's brief foray into last summer's Stanley Cup playoffs.
"We're going to do our best every day to come in here and work the players, communicate what it is that we're looking for, try to establish that [team] identity and get ourselves ready for that opening game," Laviolette declares. "But you know, it's a lot for them. It's a lot for the staff. But I think everybody's happy to be back at work and to have that opportunity to actually work and teach and coach, and for them to get out on the ice and play and learn and come together. So it's exciting more than it is anxious."