The Washington Capitals will get Alex Ovechkin back from injury against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday night. The road test at Scotiabank Arena is Washington’s first of three games in four days, all in different arenas.
Ovechkin missed 16 total games after breaking his leg on November 18 in Utah. The extended absence was the longest of Ovechkin’s career, leading to questions for head coach Spencer Carbery about just how much Ovechkin will play during this jam-packed portion of the schedule.
“I think he will be full-go,” Carbery said post-practice on Friday. “We’ll have to see how he responds after a game, but I don’t anticipate him being on a pitch count, but I mean, it would just depend on if he comes out of one of those games and is a little bit fatigued. The injury itself will be 100% healed. It’ll be more about managing his fatigue level and coming out of that. And we’ve got, like, there’s a short amount of time, right? So we’ve got to hit the ground running here.”
Ovechkin has dramatically affected Washington’s five-on-five scoring this season, so keeping him fresh will be one of Carbery’s main goals heading into 2025. When Ovechkin has played, the Capitals have scored a league-leading 4.13 goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five, but that rate has plummeted to just 1.96 goals per 60 minutes without him.
In the 18 games he has played this season, Ovechkin has averaged a career-low 17:36 time on ice per game. The increased rest during games could prove very important in this middle stage of the season when the Capitals get incredibly busy before breaking for the Four Nations Face-Off.
“This portion of the season is interesting,” Carbery said. “I was looking at it over the break – sort of split the season into three parts. You’ve got the 34 games that we just played, almost half the season, then you have Christmas break, deep breath, and now we’ve got 21 games in 44 days before the Four Nations. It’s sort of like your middle portion of the season and then the final push. So these 21 in 44 is kind of our middle where I feel like we can really help ourselves out as a team, set us up for the final push.”
After playing Toronto, the Capitals will travel to Detroit to play the Red Wings in the back half of a back-to-back, with a rare 5 pm start time. They’ll then fly home and have a day off on Monday before hosting the Boston Bruins in a matinee matchup on New Year’s Eve.
January is the second-busiest month of the year for the Capitals as they’ll play 14 times, with eight of those games coming on the road. Part of that slew of road games is the club’s annual trip to the Pacific Northwest, where they’ll play the Edmonton Oilers, Seattle Kraken, Vancouver Canucks, and Calgary Flames in a span of eight days.
“You get into a little bit of dog days here after the break because guys are like, ‘Oh, there’s still quite a bit of runway left,'” Carbery said. “But I think with the Four Nations break – we go our separate ways for a solid week, which will be nice to break that up, and then you come back and get ready for the final push.”
Ovechkin can dress for a maximum of 66 games this season. His previous career low in games played during a non-lockout or COVID-19-shortened season was 72 (2009-10).
