The last we saw of John Erskine, the rugged defenseman was playing Feb. 12 against the New York Rangers. He never played again during the regular season. That wasn’t easy to take. This is a player who saw a career-high 73 games last season. Think he was happy with 28 this time around? It’s a tough business sometimes and Erskine, still under contract for next season, had to wonder if his time would ever come again. Well, how about Game 4 of a Stanley Cup playoff series?
With Jeff Schultz on the ice for four of six Boston goals in the series, Erskine takes his place next to Dennis Wideman. He played with Wideman in 16 of his 28 games this season so the two are familiar enough with each other. But that game against the Rangers was Erskine’s lone appearance since Feb. 1. Kind of a tough re-entry, isn’t it?
“I’ve been bag skated for two months now so I think I’ll be good like that,” Erskine said of his conditioning. “But whenever you get thrown into a game it’s a different kind of conditioning so it’ll take me a few shifts to get going.”
He won’t have much time to get acclimated. But theoretically his skill set should profile better against rough-and-tumble Boston. Milan Lucic was tossing Caps around at will in Game 3 on Monday. At 6-foot-4, 224 pounds, Erskine can probably hold his own, if needed.
“If anything were to get out of hand, [Erskine] would be our guy to stand up for us,” Alzner said. “He’s the only guy on our team, except for [Matt Hendricks], that really will fight on a consistent basis. You know, playoff hockey, you don’t really think a whole lot of bad things will happen, but if it does, it’s nice to have Ersky.”
Added Washington coach Dale Hunter: “We just want [Erskine] there because he plays the body. After the whistles – I think [game officials are] gonna clamp down on that, so we don’t want no penalties. We basically want to play through the whistle and we skate away. We play hockey between the whistles. We just want him there to finish more hits on Boston.”
Erskine did have an injury late last month – what is believed to be left knee surgery – but he eventually returned to practice and has been skating with his teammates again at practices and morning skates.
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