About the last thing anyone with the Caps wanted to talk about during Wednesday’s morning skate was Alex Ovechkin’s ice time. That topic took a pretty good beating in the aftermath of Game 2 against the New York Rangers on Monday. Didn’t stop reporters from asking about his infamous 13 minutes, 36 seconds of ice time, though.
“I don’t think it’s time right now to talk about it,” Ovechkin said. “We’re not [concerned] about giving me 30-40 minutes of ice time, we’re here to make suggestions [on how] to make a win. If it takes giving me 13 minutes of ice time and we win the game, I’ll take it.”
Ovechkin is likely to be reunited with center Nicklas Backstrom for Game 3 on Wednesday night, if the lines at the morning skate can be believed. Given that he has the last change as the home team, it’s hard to see coach Dale Hunter playing his best offensive options that little tonight. Tough to tell, though. He wouldn’t even acknowledge that Ovechkin and Backstrom would play together.
“Players play when we’re put on the ice and other than that we don’t have any say. You guys are making a story about nothing,” forward Brooks Laich said. “There’s a lot of guys in there that are playing real well that maybe should be earning something. Jay Beagle, how about him? Has anybody talked about him? Karl Alzner, blocking as many shots as anybody in the league. Nobody mentions his name. There’s a lot of guys playing tremendous hockey that are deserving of the minutes they get.”
Well, that’s not completely true. But point taken, I guess. Those two have flown under the radar a bit. But it’s hard to say you shouldn’t talk about the league’s highest-paid player skating minutes closer to that of a third-line player during the regular season. The strategy worked on Monday so it’s hard to argue with it. But it was still worthy of chatter. At the very least, even if the players claim not to pay attention to it, Beagle is getting 20 minutes of ice time carries a message for them, too.
Have we forgotten Matt Bradley’s revealing interview with an Ottawa radio station last summer? One of his better quotes seems relevant this week.
“When you’re paying your top guys a lot of money and those guys carry you through the whole season, and if one of them isn’t going, it’s very hard not to play them, and I understand that that’s tough,” Bradley said at the time. “But I think in the end, if you want to win, sometimes you have to sit some of those guys down and maybe send a message and try to get them going.”
That isn’t lost on the current crop of Caps, some of whom have been around for all of the playoff failures past. It’s actually about the only thing they were willing to discuss about Ovechkin’s ice time saga.
“It should motivate everybody. If you’re going to play well you’re going to get minutes,” Laich said. “There’s no hierarchy in the room when it comes to that. Guys check their egos at the door. It’s an old cliché, but you check your ego at the door. If you’re on the ice you play your tail off and if you’re on the bench you support the guys that are on the ice. That’s the way it is.”
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