The Capitals held one final practice at 11AM on Wednesday morning before the team departs for Ottawa Wednesday afternoon. The Capitals next face the Senators on Thursday night. Connor McMichael and Joe Snively, who will likely fill-in for Evgeny Kuznetsov (one-game suspension) and Connor Brown (lower body injury) practice with the main group on Wednesday.
LINES AND PAIRS AT WEDNESDAY’S PRACTICE
The absence of Brown and Kuznetsov resulted in re-worked forward lines on Wednesday morning. It’s likely these will be the line Thursday night in Ottawa.
Alex Ovechkin — Lars Eller — Conor Sheary
Aliaksei Protas — Dylan Strome — T.J. Oshie
Marcus Johansson — Connor McMichael — Anthony Mantha
Joe Snively — Nic Dowd — Garnet Hathaway
Martin Fehervary — John Carlson
Dmitry Orlov — Nick Jensen
Erik Gustafsson — Trevor Van Riemsdyk
Darcy Kuemper
Charlie Lindgren
Extras: Matt Irwin, Beck Malenstyn
The team announced on Wednesday that they had recalled forward Beck Malenstyn from Hershey. He skated as an extra on Wednesday.
Capitals PP1: Carlson, Ovechkin, Oshie, Strome, Johansson
PP2: Orlov (pt), Gustafsson (left circle), Snively (middle), Mantha (half wall), Sheary (down low).
— Tom Gulitti (@TomGulittiNHL) October 19, 2022
Capitals head coach Peter Laviolette spoke about Brown during his weekly radio spot on 107.7 The Fan Wednesday morning before practice.
“We’re still evaluating him. He suffered a lower body injury, the doctors are looking at him, yesterday,” said Laviolette. “Certainly not what we wanted to see with him. He’s such a hard working guy, and competitive guy on the ice. So that was tough to see him leave the game.”
Laviolette met with the media after Wednesday’s practice:
STATS AND LEAGUE RANKINGS AFTER 4 GAMES
The following are the Capitals basic and advanced stats after the first four games. It’s very early in the season, but it’s important to collect a first set of stats in order to set a baseline for follow-up analysis this season, so that we can track trends for the team as the season progresses.
We will pull these same stats on a regular basis during the season, and provide comparison to the previous stats in order to identify key trends for the team over the course of the season.
SHAVINGS
- Monday marked Carlson’s 135th career multi-point game, which is the fifth most among active defensemen. With 595 career points (133g, 462a), Carlson sits five points shy of reaching the 600-point mark and simultaneously passing Michal Pivonka (599) for the fifth-most points in franchise history. In addition, Carlson is nine games shy of playing in his 900th career game.
Middle of the pack in most stats. Not too surprised by that.
P.K. was top 10 last season. It will be interesting to see if the same heat builds for new P.K. coach, like it does/did for Forsythe after slow start.
Well it is a new system and an aggressive one at that with new players so probably need to give it a bit of time.
I’d like to see our 5×5 passing and shot creation improve a lot. We look slow. Not using passing to get open looks.
Our net front presence has been good. I think Protas has been good at getting to net and obviously Sheary and OV both had tip-in goals. McMichael is good in front of the net as well.
Don’t like first line Eller. Ruf!
Thanks for the stats — nice having them all in one place. I assume that in all rankings, the closer to 1 will always be better?
I like McM playing center which is his natural spot, but question Snively on the 4th. As Jon earlier wrote, Beck “will be competing with Axel Jonsson-Fjallby for the fourth line left wing spot vacated by Carl Hagelin.” Since they recalled Beck, he is available. Snively because he has been here? Possibly Beck next game after a few practices?