It has only been a shade over two weeks, but trust me – the Capitals are as done with training camp as you are. One more preseason game this afternoon at Verizon Center against the Chicago Blackhawks.
Veteran winger Matt Hendricks looked none too pleased yesterday at practice when he left the ice early with a minor injury. Didn’t catch exactly what it was.
“[But] as soon as he went off he was scratched from the lineup,” coach Bruce Boudreau said. “Anybody that’s a little bit injured isn’t playing.”
Boudreau said only “not at this point” when asked if there were any concerns about Hendricks starting the regular season against Carolina next Saturday. Jeff Halpern also gets the day off, though he is not injury related.
“I don’t know if it’s progressed where you ever want it to be until, who knows, Christmas,” Boudreau. “You’ve got a lot of new guys vying for it. But it’s progressed. It’s gotten better and better, which I think is natural from the start of camp until now. I assume we’re going to continue to get better.”
When asked if we – fans, media, even coaches – make too much of preseason and training cap, he continued: “When was the last time [the New England Patriots] won a preseason game in football? I think we want to make more than it is. Coaches want to win every preseason game all the time. But there are certain things that you want to accomplish. In two weeks you won’t even know what our record was in preseason.”
Boudreau did say that winger Troy Brouwer is expected to start on the top line with Alex Ovechkin next Saturday during the regular season opener against Carolina. Not a big surprise there, but hadn’t heard that said definitively yet. He didn’t include the center in that statement, but we expect that to be Marcus Johansson. Here are the expected lines for this late afternoon contest:
Ovechkin-Johansson-Brouwer
Semin-Backstrom-Knuble
Chimera-Laich-Ward
King-Perreault-Beagle
No word on the defensive pairings, though not hard to figure Karl Alzner and John Carlson playing together. One interesting note: Jeff Schultz is not playing and Dmitry Orlov is. Does that say anything about the opening night lineup? We’d expected Orlov to be back in Hershey by now. At 20, he could always use more development time. It’s possible this is just a last look before he returns to the AHL, but Schultz has struggled at times this preseason. The other blueliners are Dennis Wideman, Mike Green and Roman Hamrlik. Michal Neuvirth is back from a minor injury and will start in goal for Washington.
Follow me on Twitter @bmcnally14
