Connor Brown’s season changed just four games into his tenure with the Capitals.
With Tom Wilson set to begin the year out of the lineup, the Caps traded for Brown to shore up their depth on the right wing. By mid-October, Brown suffered the same injury Wilson had incurred, a torn ACL, and just like that, Brown’s season was done.
At the Capitals’ Breakdown Day on Saturday, Brown said that he figured that his season was over as soon as he was hit in that fateful game.
“I had a feeling,” he explained to The Hockey News’ Sammi Silber. “Just because I’ve never really felt anything like that. You can kind of feel it popping there.
“You know, not the way you drew it up coming in here. I was excited to get going with an experienced group like this.”
The frustration was compounded by what Brown saw as a strong preseason and start to the year. He played all four regular-season games on the first line with Alex Ovechkin and saw time on both the team’s first penalty-kill unit and its second power-play unit.
“I think it’s been the biggest test of my career so far to be honest,” Brown said. “To go through this, you come to a new team, adjusting early, playing with a new system, new guys and then to have the season cut really short like that after I felt like I [did] nicely in preseason. I felt really good about my game as far as me personally. It was obviously tough: you get three games, not really time to find a groove and then it’s cut short.”
Instead, Brown’s injury, sustained during October 17th’s game against the Vancouver Canucks, would require surgery and a lengthy recovery. Brown had largely avoided long stretches away from the game, making this season a new experience.
“It’s frustrating,” he said of his feelings when he first found out he needed surgery. “Disappointment. I was really, really excited to get in here with such an experienced group. I thought that at the beginning of the year — injuries have played a major role this year — but I thought we had a good team. I thought we could make some noise. And so, just disappointment when it first happened for sure.”
There’s a dark irony here: the player acquired to replace a hurt teammate lasted only a few weeks before going down with an identical injury himself. In a way, Brown’s season became emblematic of the team’s injury woes on the whole.
At Breakdown Day, both captain Alexander Ovechkin and general manager Brian MacLellan emphasized Brown as a strong addition to the team that could have helped mitigate an injury-laden year.
“He was a huge piece for us in summer,” Ovechkin said of Brown.
“I would have loved to had him play the whole year and see where he fits,” said MacLellan. “From a personnel standpoint, we really liked the player. He’s a good person. He seemed like he would have been a perfect fit for us.”
Any hope of playing this season evaporated with the team’s lackluster performance. If the Capitals had made the playoffs, Brown may have been able to return. Without that opportunity, he missed almost the entire season. However, Brown found a silver lining in the additional time he’s had to recover.
“My whole year preparation and rehab was trying to get back for a playoff run and be able to be an option in the playoffs, if it came to it,” he explained. “So once that was taken away, adjusted course a little bit as far as my rehab and give the graft site a little but more time to heal, stay off it.”
Even if he didn’t make it back into the lineup, Brown’s pleased with his current progress. He confirmed that he expected to be ready to play by next training camp.
“Everything’s gone great,” he said. “I’ve been ticking all the boxes the whole way and it’s kind of nice to have that 10, 11-month buffer of recovery. Especially when I’m already starting to feel good now, five and a half months post-surgery. It’s good. Rehab just takes time; it’s tough to be patient but it’s nice to see everything going the right direction.”
Frustrating as it may be, the year-long break meant an opportunity to take a step back and look at his play from a new perspective. Brown was optimistic that he could come back even better than before.
“I tried to approach this rehab as an opportunity to kind of reinvent my biomechanics and kind of be as efficient as possible when it comes to my rehab and when it comes to the way I move and the speed and everything,” he said. “The plan is to get better. The plan isn’t to just get back where I want to be, I want to make improvements. You get a full calendar year to just improve on yourself and improve on your strength and your skills, all summer to improve on skating. That’s my expectations for myself.”
He had plenty of company while out of the lineup. In addition to the rotating cast of players temporarily out of the lineup, Carl Hagelin also spent the entire season out with an injury. That friendship was a major factor in staying positive through a difficult year.
“I’d go through the year with Hagelin,” Brown explained. “He’s been battling through rehab too. And to go through that with someone who’s been [there] made the experience a little bit better. Obviously leaning on family and stuff but, you know, feeling good. It’s nice when you turn that corner and you start to feel good again. That’s exciting.”
Tom Wilson also helped to keep Brown’s mood up. When Wilson returned to the lineup halfway through the season, his recovery reminded Brown of what he was working towards.
“It’s nice to see Tommy Wilson go through the same injury as me and the way that he played, especially down the stretch those last 20 games,” he said. “You can see he had his jump back and playing 20 minutes. That’s inspiring. He’s been very helpful throughout my process and it’s inspiring to see him play so well down the stretch.”
Brown will be an unrestricted free agent this summer once his three-year, $3.6 million AAV contract expires. It’s not clear whether he’ll return to the Capitals. Though he participated in Breakdown Day, he wasn’t present for the team’s annual photo and had to be edited in after the fact.
“A lot of that’s up in the air and a lot of that’s out of my control,” Brown said of his future. “For me, I know that the rehab’s going well and I’m starting to feel healthy again. Just kind of control that and let the pieces come out as they may.”
He confirmed that he hadn’t yet spoken to MacLellan on an extension.
“There hasn’t been any sort of contract discussion here. I’m sure that they’ve got a lot of moving parts too so I think that they’ll let everything unfold and see how the summer goes.”
Those sentiments were echoed in MacLellan’s own interview. He plans to talk to Brown’s camp before free agency opens on July 1.
“The situation we’re in now, I guess we’ll talk to his representatives and see what they’re thinking just before free agency,” MacLellan said. “We’ll examine what we think we can get done trades and free agents and put that decision in that group.”
Even without firm plans for next season, Brown remains optimistic for the future. He’s managed to put something of a positive spin on a bad situation.
“It’s been an opportunity to get better and to reevaluate a lot of the things that I did,” he said of the injury. “Reevaluating my diet, making sure that’s as good as it possibly can be, reevaluating the way that I train and making sure that’s as efficient as it can be.
“I’m 29 years old, so I feel like I’m entering the second half of my career and it’s important to take care of all those things. I feel like I have a really good base and a really good camp in my corner to kind of help me moving forward. So, I’m looking forward to it.”
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
