Caps' Ovechkin is week-to-week with injury

November 2, 5:39 PMWashington Capitals ExaminerMichael Hoffman

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Washington Capitals Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

It seems the news is a little more serious that we first suspected on the Alexander Ovechkin front. Yesterday I told you that Alex told us that he was day-to-day with an injury. Well the Washington Capitals are reporting back to us that Ovechkin is actually week-to-week

.
Alexander Ovechkin seen here scoring, is week-to-week.

From the WashingtonCapitals.com

Washington Capitals left wing Alex Ovechkin suffered an upper-body strain in Sunday evening’s game against the Columbus Blue Jackets and his status is week-to-week, the team determined Monday.
 
Ovechkin, the NHL leader in points (23) and goals (14) and the league’s Second Star of the Month for October, is expected to miss the fifth game of his five-year career on Wednesday at New Jersey. He has only missed two games due to injury in his first four seasons.
 
“We have to buckle down,” head coach Bruce Boudreau said earlier Monday. “A goal a game he scores, so we got to play better defense and cannot allow four or five goals a game. You have to win 3-1 and 2-1 and if you get lucky sometimes make it a 4-2 game. I think we have enough character players who understand what we will have to do without Alex.”
 
Ovechkin played just 7:43 of Sunday’s overtime loss to Columbus and was held without a point for just the third time this year. He was examined and treated by the team’s medical staff and underwent an MRI exam on Monday.
 
The two-time reigning most valuable player will travel with the Capitals this week to continue to receive medical treatment.

Hmm. I have to tell you I read this one wrong and believed this injury more likely to affect Ovechkin for just a game or two. One of the many factors though yesterday that made me really hesitate to make that prediction was Alex's silence on the issue. For a player that generally likes to talk, the fact that he did not know how badly his injury was, or would not say what he knew, meant that we were dealing with an unknown, an unknown that it turns out was a little worse than initially thought.

If anything though the Capitals have cut themselves a little room for something like this to happen. What do I mean by that? Well, with 20 points in 14 games, the Caps are still in 2nd in the Eastern Conference meaning that they aren't all of a sudden going to drop waywardly down in the league standings and hit rock bottom anytime soon. If the Caps can also give the same balanced effort they did against Columbus, minus of course the defensive breakdowns, the Capitals could be fine. The play of  Brooks Laich who had two goals last game, will once again be very important for the Capitals in terms of raising the play both on offense and on defense when he is paired with checkers like Steckel and Bradley. The Capitals will also need a more consistent effort from Alexander Semin who is an offensive wunderkind in some games, and in other games remains unheard from, spending too much time trying to create one-on-one offense.

The only other good thing? Well at least this injury didn't occur right before the playoffs. Mark that off as a positive.

For now, he Capitals as they did last year with as many as eight regulars missing, simply need to weather this storm and I believe we can do it. As Quintin Laing said yesterday, "we want to show we are bigger than one guy." Now would be the time to do it.