ARLINGTON, VA — Sonny Milano spent nearly all of the 2024-25 season on the sidelines, playing just three games before suffering an upper-body injury in early November. The season hadn’t been easy even before the injury: Milano had started the year as a healthy scratch, sitting out nine of the team’s first 12 games, and had just made it back into the lineup when he got hurt.
During the extended recovery process, he told reporters Tuesday that he had tried to maintain an optimistic mindset.
“Yeah, it sucked, but it was part of it,” he said. “Stay positive. And I knew I was eventually going to come back, so I just had to stay with it.”
While Milano downplayed much of the difficulty of his recovery, repeating his “stay positive” mantra three times in a single interview, head coach Spencer Carbery acknowledged that Milano’s season was harder than he let on.
“He’s good at speaking to the media, spinning the positive,” Carbery said. “Sonny, as you’ve gotten to know him, you know he’s a positive guy, optimistic guy. Going to see the best in every situation, and so I’m sure he was able to handle it the best possible way he could.
“But at the same time, you’re missing 80, 79 games. It’s a lot to go through, to miss that amount of time, and then going through the injury as well. But kudos to him and credit to him for staying with it.”
Milano also credited his teammates for helping to keep his spirits up. Despite spending so much time out of a lineup — on a roster with plenty of new faces — players made sure to keep him included.
“All the guys were just great,” he said. “Never felt like I wasn’t part of the team. It felt like I was there the whole way, and it made it easy for me.”
The full extent of Milano’s injury wasn’t immediately apparent. After playing his last game on November 6, the Capitals initially reported Milano as out week-to-week before placing him on long-term injured reserve on November 20. By late February, Milano even looked like he could be nearing a full recovery, re-joining the team’s practices as a full participant.
That push to return to play, however, proved premature. Milano suffered what general manager Chris Patrick called a “fairly significant” setback, undoing much of the progress he’d made in the prior months.
“That sucked,” he said. “In February, I thought I was going to come back, and then obviously I had a setback. That was disappointing, but it is what it is.”
Even after the setback, Milano didn’t let himself get worried that this could prove the end of the line for his career.
“You’ve got to get past that,” he said. “If you do that, you’re probably just going to get hurt if you’re worried too much — so you’ve just got to play your game.”
Milano said Tuesday that he’s “been feeling good for a while now,” stating that he started to feel like himself again by the end of the season, but by that point, it was too late to attempt a comeback. Since arriving at training camp, he’s gotten the chance to shake the rust off the skills he couldn’t practice on his own.
“Just things you can’t really work on in the summer — just like the D-man coming on you on the boards,” he said. “Sometimes you forget how quick the game is, but after the first period I think it comes back.”
Carbery, too, believes Milano is playing like his pre-injury self again.
“I don’t see a huge difference in him, but I do see the same player, which is good, right?” he said. “Because when you miss that much time, you’re wondering if he can get up to the level that he’s capable of playing at, back when he was playing really, really well and firing on all cylinders. And it looks like he’s playing at the top level of Sonny right now, and that’s good for him.”
Milano’s return could prove a significant boon for the Capitals if he can maintain his prior level of performance. In 2023-24, he recorded 23 points (15g, 8a) in 49 games, and he cracked the 30-point threshold in his first year in Washington, posting 33 points (11g, 22a) in 2022-23.
Three hundred twenty days after his last game, Milano wasted no time making a splash in his first night back. He factored into four of the Capitals’ goals in the team’s 5-2 preseason win against the Boston Bruins on Sunday, including a flashy backhander less than seven minutes into the contest.
“To see him perform like that in his first game action in almost a full calendar year was impressive,” Carbery said Tuesday. “And good for him, because you can only imagine going through what he went through last year, the setbacks, and just wondering when you’re ever going to get back into game action. For him to step back in there (at the) beginning of camp, early in camp, gain some momentum for himself and some confidence, is big. And so it’s a good first step for him to earning a spot back on our roster.”
The Capitals will have significant competition for their final forward roster spots, with players like Milano, Hendrix Lapierre, Ivan Miroshnichenko, Andrew Cristall, and Lynden Lakovic all throwing their hats into the ring. But if Milano continues to perform like he did Sunday night, he’ll make himself impossible to turn away.
