The Washington Capitals will be without Trevor van Riemsdyk for a good amount of time to end the 2022-23 season. The veteran, reliable defender did not practice on Saturday.
The team told NBC Sports Washington’s Matt Weyrich that TVR is dealing with an upper-body injury and will be out for at least a week.
A week out of the lineup would mean that TVR will miss at the very least Sunday’s game against the New York Rangers (4/2), Thursday’s game against the Montreal Canadiens (4/6), and Saturday’s game against the Florida Panthers (4/8). The Caps then finish their schedule with three games in just four days against the New York Islanders (4/10), Boston Bruins (4/11), and New Jersey Devils (4/13).
It’s not clear when exactly TVR suffered his injury. He played the least amount of minutes (15:21) among all Caps defensemen in the team’s recent 5-1 loss in Tampa to the Lightning. In that game, he took three hits and blocked one shot.
Here is his shift chart from the game.
With TVR out of the lineup, Matt Irwin will likely become a regular fixture in games again like he was for the majority of March. The Caps could also shut TVR down for the rest of the season and call up a player from Hershey with the salary cap that would free up. As of right now, they have just $77,950 in free space and just six healthy blueliners.
TVR has missed just one game to this point in the season and has recorded a new career-best 23 points (7g, 16a). The Caps signed him to a three-year extension earlier this month.
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
