Star will rest to relieve an undisclosed injury
Capitals left wing Alex Ovechkin will miss at least a week with an undisclosed injury, the team announced Monday.
Ovechkin is officially out seven to 10 days and won’t play in Tuesday’s critical Eastern Conference game at Philadelphia. The 25-year-old has yet to miss a contest this season and in his six-year NHL career has played in all but 14 games.
“I look through every team’s lineup, and every team has injuries to major players,” Caps coach Bruce Boudreau said. “In a perfect world, we’d all be healthy. But it’s not, and that’s what the playoffs are about and the end of the season is about.”
| Caps notes |
| » The top two teams in the Eastern Conference meet Tuesday at Wells Fargo Center when the Caps (42-21-10, 94 points) play the Philadelphia Flyers (44-19-8, 96). |
| » The Flyers have won two of the three previous meetings this season. Each one has been decided in overtime or a shootout. |
| » Washington will clinch a Stanley Cup playoff berth with a victory or a Carolina loss at Ottawa on Tuesday. It would be the Caps’ fourth consecutive appearance. |
Though the team wouldn’t reveal the actual injury, Ovechkin did endure a knee-on-knee collision with forward Darren Helm during last Wednesday’s game at Detroit and was slow to get up off the ice. But he looked fine during the New Jersey game two days later, and Boudreau scoffed when that collision was mentioned.
Boudreau did say that Ovechkin has dealt with “some nagging injuries” for much of the season. He had a cortisone injection in early January — believed to be in his wrist — and when pressed, Boudreau admitted that the aches and pains of the grueling NHL season have taken their toll.
The timing isn’t ideal. Boudreau would like to set his lines before the Stanley Cup playoffs start in three weeks. But the Caps still thrived despite injuries to key players recently, including centers Nicklas Backstrom (fractured left thumb) and Jason Arnott (undisclosed), defenseman Mike Green (head injury) and right wing Eric Fehr (shoulder).
Ovechkin was far off his normal career numbers through the season’s first 46 games with 15 goals and 30 assists (45 points). In the 27 games since then, he has 14 goals and 18 assists (32 points). Ovechkin has pushed himself back among the NHL’s scoring leaders in points (77), in which he ranks sixth, and assists (48), in which he is fifth overall.
“[It’s difficult] when people are coming at you — ‘What’s wrong, what’s this, what’s that’ — and you kind of have to keep your mouth shut and just keep playing,” veteran forward Mike Knuble said. “And obviously [Ovechkin] kept showing up and playing and trying the best he could. I don’t know if there was anything obvious that we could see or if he looked like he was laboring. But he was our captain, and he was going to show up and play as hard as he can every night.”
