The Washington Capitals will play their first game without Alex Ovechkin this season against the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday night. With Ovechkin out week-to-week due to his “lower leg injury,” Washington has been forced to make changes to their lineup.
Head coach Spencer Carbery spoke Wednesday about the team’s several options to try and fill the massive void left by their superstar. One of those options, Andrew Mangiapane, will get the first crack at playing with Dylan Strome and Aliaksei Protas on the club’s first line.
Mangiapane started the season playing with Ovechkin and Strome but has been a mainstay on the third line since the second game on the schedule.
Lineup against Avalanche
Mangiapane has recorded eight points (4g, 4a) in his first 18 games with the Capitals, arriving over the offseason in a trade from the Calgary Flames. The 28-year-old winger is ranked 11th among the team’s forwards in five-on-five ice time per game (10:50) but also has a role on the penalty kill and second power-play unit.
With Mangiapane vacating his spot on the third line, Hendrix Lapierre will step in on the wing. Lapierre has not played since Washington’s overtime loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on November 13.
“I have a ton of confidence in our group,” Carbery said Thursday. “It’s a huge hole to fill without a doubt. But we’ve got someone that’s going to step in the lineup, that’s been here all year, and Hendrix Lapierre that I have a lot of confidence in. And then also the rest of the group being able to be still productive while you’re missing a key player is absolutely achievable.”
Carbery also relayed his message to the team, entering this stretch of games without their leader and the NHL’s top goal scorer.
“[What I hope to see] is our group not trying to get out of character because they feel like they need to do something exceptional to make up for the absence of our captain,” Carbery said. “Giving more and doing more needs to be done in the right way. And if you take that a little bit too literally and try to do things outside of the realm of our structure, that sometimes can go the other way.
“So, we need to be careful with that. We’re not trying to save the world. Everybody’s not trying to be Alex Ovechkin and, ‘I gotta make something happen here.’ And, ‘I gotta shoot this puck in the back of the net here.’ Now, it’s high and wide, and it’s a breakout. And all of a sudden, Nathan McKinnon’s on it. Just things like that, we need to be mindful of.”
Ivan Miroshnichenko, recalled from the AHL’s Hershey Bears on Wednesday, will join defenders Alex Alexeyev and Dylan McIlrath as the team’s healthy scratches.
The Capitals will get Logan Thompson back in net after Charlie Lindgren downed Utah HC 6-2 earlier this week. Thompson had a slight injury scare at the start of Thursday morning’s skate but ultimately was the first goaltender off the ice, and Carbery confirmed he was good to go against the Avalanche.
“Yeah, yeah, LT’s fine,” Carbery said. “He’ll be good for tonight.”
Thompson has had a spectacular start to his tenure with the Capitals, posting an 8-0-1 record with a 2.63 goals-against average and a .913 save percentage through nine appearances. Per MoneyPuck, he has stopped 6.9 more goals than expected, which ranks ninth in the NHL.
Colorado rebounded after their 5-2 loss to the Capitals last Friday with a 3-2 win over the Philadelphia Flyers on Monday. They have won four of their previous five games, with their only loss being that home defeat to Washington.
