The Washington Capitals will take on the St. Louis Blues for the first time this season on Thursday night. Their captain, Alex Ovechkin, will join them on the ice for the first time since January 11 after he missed the team’s last three games with a lower-body injury.
Ovechkin was a full participant in Wednesday’s practice and Thursday’s morning skate. After being labeled a game-time decision by head coach Spencer Carbery, The Great Eight took warmups and was determined to be good to go.
The big winger will jump right back onto a very familiar line with Evgeny Kuznetsov and Tom Wilson. He is still riding a six-game point streak.
Per the Capitals, Beck Malenstyn (personal reasons) and Joel Edmundson (upper-body injury) will not play.
“[Ovechkin] is better,” Carbery said Thursday. “He’ll be a game-time [decision] but I think we’ll see how he feels tonight. We’ve got some lineup things to work through today so there will be a lot of question marks for tonight. I can’t give you too much lineup-wise because it really could move in a bunch of different directions.”
Edmundson got into a fight with Anaheim Ducks forward Ross Johnston in the Capitals’ 2-0 win on Tuesday night. The 30-year-old rearguard already missed a large chunk of this season due to fracturing his hand in Training Camp. He has gotten into 27 games since and recorded three points (1g, 2a).
#Caps Joel Edmundson is out for tonight’s game (upper body; day-to-day). In addition, Beck Malenstyn will not play tonight (personal).
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) January 18, 2024
Malenstyn’s wife Annie is expecting and the couple announced a January due date on Instagram back in August. This will be Malenstyn’s first missed game of the season as he had played in the prior 42, recording 10 points (4g, 6a). Now, only Nick Jensen, John Carlson, and Dylan Strome can say they have yet to leave the lineup this year.
Alex Alexeyev will get another game in Edmundson’s place and line up on the team’s third defense pairing next to Nick Jensen. Hendrix Lapierre jumps right into Malenstyn’s spot on the left wing of the fourth line next to Nic Dowd and Nicolas Aube-Kubel.
The lone healthy scratch will be rookie forward Matthew Phillips.
Lineys!#CapsBlues | @JackDaniels_US pic.twitter.com/owCLJmV0po
— Washington Capitals (@Capitals) January 18, 2024
