With that in mind, Caps coach Barry Trotz turned the second half of Thursday's morning skate into a scrimmage.
"Even when you take a couple of days off, you're not out there against another five opponents," says Trotz. "So we did a little couple of minutes of scrimmage, just to get used to looking through people, executing under a little bit of pressure and that type of thing.
"Usually what happens is you lose a little bit of your hands and your lungs; they shut down a little bit on you, so you need something to get them going a little bit. So we did a little bit of that, and we just changed our whole - for the most part -pretty well our whole game day skate, adding some elements that we probably would have used yesterday."
Less than a month ago, the Caps dealt with similar circumstances coming out of their holiday break. They skated early in the morning at Kettler before departing for Newark late in the morning, but travel woes also delayed their arrival for a couple of hours that time, putting them in midtown Manhattan a few hours later than scheduled for a game that same night against the New York Rangers.
Although the Caps did not win that game against the Rangers, they acquitted themselves well in falling 1-0 in the shootout.
"I think a break is good with how the schedule is," says caps center Jay Beagle. "It was good to get out there. We did a couple of different drills and a scrimmage towards the end.
"I think it's more of your mind. It's more your mind than anything. Your body, I mean, you're in shape. Four days isn't going to make that much of a difference, especially because guys do a little bit of stuff just towards the end of the break anyway, just to make sure they feel good that first day on the ice.
"We've just got to take from all of the previous experiences and come at these guys, because this is a big game tonight."