Well, that road trip got off to an unpromising start. Capitals senior writer Mike Vogel reports from Montreal this morning that center Jason Arnott did not accompany the team on the first leg of its six-game swing away from Verizon Center. He is officially listed as “week-to-week” with an undisclosed injury. For now, that means Arnott would miss games at Montreal (tonight), Detroit (Wednesday) and New Jersey (Friday). Washington plays away games next week at Philadelphia (Tuesday), Ottawa (Friday) and Montreal again (Saturday).
No doubt this is another injury blow to a team already without center Nicklas Backstrom. Won’t know until Vogel and the Post’s Katie Carrera report from the morning skate at Bell Centre, but Backstrom is on the trip, according to Vogel, and we saw him in the hallway outside the locker room on Sunday without the cast he’d been sporting for his fractured left thumb. Maybe the team gets him back in the lineup as soon as tonight.
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If Backstrom plays that would stabilize the lineup, obviously. Bruce Boudreau could keep Brooks Laich at third-line center and be good to go. If Backstrom is still out then Jay Beagle could also move into the lineup at center along with Laich, Boyd Gordon and Marcus Johansson. So there are options there without needing to use an emergency recall on someone like Mathieu Perreault from AHL Hershey.
That’s the short-term solution. And almost any team in the NHL can get by without a key player for three or four games. But if Arnott’s absence is much longer than that you start to worry. The playoffs will start sometime around April 12. The Caps obviously would like to have Arnott, Mike Green (head injury) and Tom Poti (groin) back playing games a good 7-to-10 days before then to get them playing time. Green is not on the current road trip and can’t play until March 22 at the earliest. Poti has been skating harder over the last few days and Vogel says he is on the trip. That suggests he’s close to testing that injured groin one more time.
Arnott was acquired from New Jersey at the Feb. 28 trade deadline and has been an instant asset to a team that was using rookies Johansson, 20, and Perreault, 23, to center the second and third lines. Both had their moments and Johansson has blossomed as the season’s progressed. But it’s impossible for either of those players to match a former team captain and Stanley Cup winner with now 900 career points and 1,168 games of NHL experience.
Since joining the Caps, Arnott has anchored the second-line center position, recorded two goals and three assists. He scored the winning goal vs. St. Louis on March 3 and assisted on the game-winning goal vs. Carolina last Friday. Plus, he’s already assumed the role of unofficial big brother for the mercurial Alex Semin and – apparently – fit into the room seamlessly. That’s not bad for two weeks and change of work. Arnott will be missed. The question now is for exactly how long?
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