Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin will miss his team’s regular-season finale against the New York Rangers at MSG, Friday. It will be the third game in a row that he will miss with the upper-body injury that he suffered against the Toronto Maple Leafs this past Sunday.

The Great Eight did skate today but head coach Peter Laviolette has once again told The Washington Post’s Samantha Pell that Ovi will not be available.

Joining him as a scratch against New York is his long-time buddy Nicklas Backstrom as number 19 will sit for body maintenance reasons.

Those two lineup announcements mean that Connor McMichael and Axel Jonsson-Fjallby will almost certainly be on the ice at the Garden. They had split the two previous games Ovi had been out. If they were to just plug and place McMichael for Backstrom this is how the lines would turn out.

Laviolette elaborated to Pell that Ovi had a “good day” but also made sure to confirm that keeping him out for the game against the Rangers is not just a precautionary measure. Ovechkin had a similar injury case at the end of last season but ended up returning for the season finale.

Getting the start in net will be Ilya Samsonov. Samsonov comes off a bit of a disaster performance in his last start, a 4-1 loss to the Islanders at home. In April, he is 4-2-1 with a 3.38 goals-against average and a .879 save percentage.

hotel ➡️ rink pic.twitter.com/n62qYQiCKW

— x – Washington Capitals (@Capitals) April 29, 2022

A reminder that the Capitals need to win and get a regulation loss from the Pittsburgh Penguins against the Columbus Blue Jackets to have any chance of getting out of the second Wild Card spot in the East.

Headline photo: Amanda Bowen/RMNB