Hard to commit to a gameplan when you don’t know the scenarios you’re facing. The Caps might clinch the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference as soon as tonight if the Philadelphia Flyers lose at Buffalo. Then again, they might need to grab that last point themselves on Saturday against the Florida Panthers.
“There’s a lot of decisions to be made. I think a lot depends on tonight,” Bruce Boudreau said. “There’s a lot of discussions. Going to be between the coaches and myself and [general manager] George [McPhee], almost like a round table discussion on what’s the best strategy.”
For now, the lines at Friday’s 60-minute practice: Ovechkin-Backstrom-Knuble (red); Sturm-Arnott-Semin (gray); Chimera-Johansson-Laich (green); Hendricks-Gordon-Bradley (white); blue (King-Beagle-Fehr). Nine defensemen skated (Green, Schultz, Carlson, Alzner, Hannan, Erskine, Sloan, Collins, Poti.
Mike Green says conditioning-wise he’s at about 90 percent. But he’s ready to play unless the Caps decide to hold him out for any reason. Boudreau admitted he was going into playoff mode and so was non-committal other than saying he already knew which direction the team was going in playing Green, who has missed 19 games in a row and played just twice since Feb. 6. Boudreau admitted the “most comfortable position” for Green would be to get paired with Jeff Schultz, but again was non-committal there, too. There was a lot of non-committing going on, to be honest.
All nine defensemen were on the ice Friday, save for the injured Dennis Wideman (leg hematoma). Boudreau again wouldn’t rule out Poti (groin) for the first round even though he will miss his 37th consecutive game on Saturday.
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