Alex Ovechkin is on injured reserve, and the Washington Capitals are adjusting to playing without their star captain for the next few weeks.
Ovechkin is dealing with a lower left leg injury and is considered week-to-week. Being placed on injured reserve means he will miss at least three upcoming games. This injury puts a stop to his chase of Wayne Gretzky’s NHL career goals record and sidelines the top goal scorer of this generation for now.
“He’s the hottest guy in the league, and he’s chasing something bigger than hockey,” said his longtime teammate Tom Wilson after practice on Wednesday. “I think everyone in the hockey world just feels that bit of letdown, that emotion that you’re just pulling for him and he’s putting everything he has into it. He feels all that pressure.
The whole world of hockey is just rooting him on. So, to come in (to the locker room) and see that he was hurt, it hurt a little bit as a teammate, but at the end of the day, that’s hockey.”
Ovechkin was hurt after a shin-on-shin collision with Utah’s Jack McBain on Monday. The 39-year-old forward fell to the ice in obvious pain, tried to skate it off, and then limped off the ice shortly after.
Coach Spencer Carbery confirmed that the injury is not season-ending and expects to have a clearer diagnosis and timeline after doctors evaluate Ovechkin further on Thursday.
Carbery said Ovechkin was “bummed” by the injury, and defenseman John Carlson mentioned that Ovechkin was handling the situation “like a human being,” with emotions involved. Even the next team the Capitals will face isn’t happy about Ovechkin’s injury.
“You never want to see players go down,” said Colorado coach Jared Bednar, whose Avalanche team plays the Capitals on Thursday night.
“But then you put in a situation like Ovi where he’s chasing greatness, and you want to see him healthy and be able to pursue that: a great start to the season, even getting to the night that he got hurt.
Hopefully it’s not long and that he’s able to get back. Injuries are part of it. I think everyone has to deal with them, but I’d certainly like to see him get healthy and continue to pursue that goal.”
Ovechkin had scored 15 goals in the first 18 games of the season, leading the league and getting 27 goals away from passing Gretzky. Before the injury, he was on track to break the record sometime in February.
Now, that goal may be delayed until the spring or possibly even next season, depending on how long this injury keeps him out. This could be the longest break of his two-decade NHL career, as he has only missed 59 games in total and just 35 due to injury since he started playing in 2005.
“I was having a little deja vu about just being in the locker room before we go on the ice and — almost every time — he’s there,” Carlson said. “There’s minutes to be played and goals to be scored.”
The Capitals have placed Ovechkin on IR and also put winger Sonny Milano on long-term IR due to an undisclosed upper-body injury. To replace them, the team called up young Russian winger Ivan Miroshnichenko from the AHL’s Hershey Bears.
Carbery doesn’t want Miroshnichenko to feel the pressure of filling Ovechkin’s role and is still deciding how to adjust the lineup.
One option for the top line could be Jakub Vrana, who, along with Ovechkin, Wilson, Carlson, and Lars Eller (who was recently reacquired in a trade), is one of the few remaining players from the 2018 Stanley Cup-winning team. But it will take more than one player to replace Ovechkin while he is out.
“We’re going to face the reality,” Vrana said. “Obviously, it’s hard. He’s our captain and everything. But at the same time, it is what it is. And we’re going to prepare on winning games without him.”
