Not easy to find practice time when a team is playing games almost every other day. That’s just life in the NHL, of course. Everyone deals with it. But Bruce Boudreau felt better after a solid 60-minute practice on Tuesday morning to prepare for tomorrow’s night’s game against Buffalo at Verizon Center.
The Caps are in a stretch of 14 games in 25 days. Not easy – though nine of those game are at home and the road trips easy up-and-backs to New York, Newark, Buffalo, Raleigh and Atlanta. These past two days are the only time after November 3 that Washington will have two days off between games the rest of this month. Boudreau gave his players Monday off after back-to-back games over the weekend and hopes the practice will create some better habits. Washington’s winning games, but not always in the fashion it would like.
“When we come back into our zone we’re swinging instead of stopping and going to our spots,” Boudreau said of the sloppy play creeping into his team’s game. “In the neutral zone we’re being lazy and we’re not getting up with the play…and so it makes it easy for [the opposition] as you can imagine.”
Another issue: a need for tighter defensive zone coverage, including in the slot. That’s cost them a few times in recent games. Boudreau would have gone longer than 60 minutes at practice, but figured that wasn’t the best idea with a game tomorrow and then a back-to-back on Friday and Saturday.
Every player was on the ice Tuesday morning save for injured defenseman Tom Poti (groin). In a slight lineup tweak, forward Eric Fehr was on the fourth line with center David Steckel on the third line as a winger. Otherwise nothing out of the ordinary. Poti could take part in the morning skate on Wednesday, but if he isn’t cleared to do that his chances to play at all later in the week are dim, according to Boudreau. Forward Boyd Gordon (undisclosed injury) was hurt early in last week’s game against Tampa Bay and sat out the weekend. Boudreau would only commit to playing him “at some point this week.”
Meanwhile, goalie Semyon Varlamov played his first rehab game at AHL Hershey on Sunday, a 6-3 win where the 22-year-old may have lost focus after the Bears jumped to an early 6-0 lead. Varlamov is expected to get a couple more games in Hershey this weekend and then will be reevaluated.
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