Backstrom and Ovechkin at practice. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster
The sacrificial bloodletting that was the Capitals’ shootout loss to the Kings threatened to cost Washington their most important center in Nick Backstrom and a veteran defenseman in Jack Hillen.
Based on Thursday’s practice, there’s some good news: Nick Backstrom seems to be unscathed.
Backstrom’s collision with Drew Doughty the other night appears not to have been too serious. He intends to play on Saturday.
Nick Backstrom says he will "absolutely" play Saturday against the Bruins.
— Adam Vingan (@AdamVingan) March 27, 2014
#Caps Backstrom says "absolutely" that he'll play Saturday, says he's feeling good
— Sky Kerstein (@SkyKersteinFox2) March 27, 2014
That’s very good news. It looks like it could’ve been much worse:
Jack Hillen, who was knocked out by a collision with Alex Ovechkin during overtime, was present for the team photo, but not for practice.
In Hillen’s place, John Erskine skated with Mike Green.
The forward lines, according to Katie Carrera of the Washington Post:
Johansson-Beagle-Ovi
Kuznetsov-Backstrom-Brouwer
Chimera-Fehr-Ward
Penner-Brown-Wilson
And on defense:
Alzner-Carlson
Erskine-Green
Orlov-Wey
Russian Machine Never Breaks is not associated with the Washington Capitals; Monumental Sports, the NHL, or its properties. Not even a little bit.
All original content on russianmachineneverbreaks.com is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)– unless otherwise stated or superseded by another license. You are free to share, copy, and remix this content so long as it is attributed, done for noncommercial purposes, and done so under a license similar to this one.
Share On