ARLINGTON, VA — Alex Ovechkin has made NHL history on the power play: his 312 career power-play goals hold the league record by a 38-goal margin, with many coming from his signature spot in the left faceoff circle. That success has earned Ovechkin a rare responsibility on both of the Capitals’ power-play units, keeping him on the ice for the opposition’s full two-minute penalty.
While his success on the man advantage is undeniable, load management has become a more prominent concern as Ovechkin, now 39, enters his 20th NHL season. Head coach Spencer Carbery revealed this week that he’d contemplated lowering Ovechkin’s power-play time, but still saw more than enough reason to keep him out for double shifts.
“[I] put a lot of thought about that,” Carbery said. “And I thought about that a lot last year. How do I say this? He is the greatest weapon on the power play in history. He’s older, right? Okay. But even last year and even when he gets out on the second unit, he’s still a weapon. And he scored multiple goals — I think we went back through it and I did the research. I think he scored four second-unit goals last year in the second half.
“So when you think about that utilization and putting him in the best positions possible to succeed, is it a five-on-five shift? Is it a second portion of a power play? To me, there’s a lot of value on him, even if he’s at, let’s call it 80 percent on that second [unit], because it’s starting to get longer. We’re asking him to do and work and compete and win pucks and run his routes on the breakout for a minute straight. So say it goes to 80 percent on the second unit, there’s still a lot of good that comes out of him being in the second minute. So I understand the question, I understand people will — of, like, is a fresher player [better] — the reward is still there for me. At this age and where he’s at, the reward — I watched it last year.”
Ovechkin played in 360 of Washington’s 383 power-play minutes in 2023-24, and the team failed to score a single power-play goal when he was not on the ice. He spent just over a quarter of his total minutes with a man advantage, averaging 4:33 per game, and that time accounted for 13 of his 31 goals — more than 40 percent of his goal total.
Although Ovechkin’s ice time could remain high this year, that doesn’t mean Carbery isn’t looking to make changes to the power play. The absence of TJ Oshie, who stepped away from the team due to chronic back issues, marks a particular loss, where he, Ovechkin, and Nicklas Backstrom formed a formidable trio playing the bumper position, left faceoff circle, and half wall, respectively.
Rather than keeping the system intact and simply replacing Oshie with Tom Wilson, another right shot, Carbery told reporters he’s looking to adapt to incoming players’ strengths, explaining the difficulty of replacing what Backstrom and Oshie brought to their positions.
“I think we might use two lefties there,” he said. “We’ve got some options with Mangiapane and Dubois and Dylan Strome, left shots, right? Lapierre. I’m not saying Tom’s not going to play [in Oshie’s former position]. I’m just saying — our traditional power play, we went through this a lot last year, and I think there’s two parts to that power play for the last however many years since Osh got here…When you look at a power play, that half-wall player and that bumper player will go down as two of the greatest power-play players in those specific positions to ever play together: Nick Backstrom and TJ Oshie. They will. So to think that we could just plug two guys in there and it’s going to operate, and that play into Oshie or Tom Wilson is just going to be there. It’s not realistic.
“So what I’m getting at is, Willy now turning into that shooter like TJ Oshie was and finding the space and being able to read where the puck is going, not that Willy can’t do that in certain situations, but Oshie’s one of the greatest of all time. So you just have to be careful about thinking that, ‘Okay, Dylan Strome can become Nick Backstrom because he’s a lefty. And Tom Wilson will become the bumper Oshie and then it’ll just look like it used to look.’”
Carbery was unsure who’d he put on the ice but suggested that Wilson could leverage his physicality at the netfront, leaving space to try different options out at the bumper position.
“I think we can utilize some different skill sets from Dubois, Mangiapane’s been a great bumper player through his career, especially early on, Willy potentially being closer to the net…Do we use his skill set as being a big guy that can stand on top of the crease and use him more like an [Joel] Eriksson Ek in Minnesota where he’s tighter around the net. Things like that, I think we need to be smart as a staff about and not just plug and replace in those spots.”
With none of Washington’s first-unit players suiting up for Sunday’s preseason debut, any in-game power play testing will have to wait until later in the preseason. The Capitals will play six exhibition games before beginning their regular season against the New Jersey Devils on October 12.
