Thursday’s informal skate at Medstar Capitals Iceplex saw a couple of new additions to the regular morning workouts, as well as initial preparations for the upcoming Rookie Showcase, to take place this weekend in Estero, Florida. 

Thursday’s informal skate included the return of forwards Tom Wilson and Brett Connolly to the mix. Wilson, who returned late Wednesday night after a day-long drive from his hometown of Toronto, spoke with NBC’s JJ Regan this morning about bringing the Cup to Toronto:

Tom Wilson on bringing the Cup home to Toronto: “There’s definitely a lot of bitter people there, but then also a lot of people that I’ve pulled off the Leaf train onto our bandwagon.”

— JJ Regan (@JJReganNBCS) September 6, 2018

Players who have already begun reporting to Medstar Capitals Iceplex for informal skates include: Alex Ovechkin, Matt Niskanen, John Carlson, Nicklas Backstrom, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Tom Wilson, Lars Eller, Brett Connolly, Braden Holtby, Pheonix Copley, Ilya Samsonov, Vitek Vanecek, Brooks Orpik, Christian Djoos, Jakub Vrana, Axel Jonsson-Fjallby, Nic Dowd (#26), Shane Gersich, Jonas Siegenthaler, Nathan Walker, Connor Hobbs, Mason Mitchell, Garrett Pilon, Brian Pinho and Tobias Geisser, in addition to a number of other prospects preparing for this weekend’s tournament.

Notable names who have yet to return include: TJ Oshie, Dmitry Orlov, Andre  Burakovsky, Devante Smith-Pelly, Chandler Stephenson, Madison Bowey and Michal Kempny.

As previously noted, the Capitals prospects will participate in the Rookie Showcase this weekend, which includes prospects from the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Nashville Predators. The annual tournament has included the Florida Panthers in years past, who are not participating in this year’s tournament. Therefore, the Capitals will face the Nashville Predators prospects twice in the three-game tournament.

On Wednesday, the Capitals released their official roster for the tournament, which includes all of their 2018 draft picks.

The Capitals prospects departed for Florida late Thursday afternoon.

The Capitals official training camp is set to kick-off one week from today, next Thursday, September 13.

By Jon Sorensen