ARLINGTON — Alex Ovechkin is on injured reserve, and the Washington Capitals are coming to grips with playing without their superstar captain for the coming weeks.
Ovechkin is considered week-to-week with a lower left leg injury, and going on IR rules him out for at least the next three games. The absence puts a pause on his pursuit of Wayne Gretzky’s NHL career goals record and takes the best pure scorer of this generation off the ice until further notice.
“He’s the hottest guy in the league, and he’s chasing something bigger than hockey,” longtime teammate Tom Wilson said after practice 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 injured in a shin-on-shin collision with Utah’s Jack McBain on Monday night. The 39-year-old winger went down in obvious pain, then tried to skate and test out the leg minutes later before limping down the tunnel.
Coach Spencer Carbery confirmed it was not a season-ending injury and expects a more specific diagnosis and timeframe to be available Thursday after further evaluation by doctors. Carbery described Ovechkin’s initial reaction as “bummed,” while veteran defenseman John Carlson said Ovechkin was handling it “like a human being,” with plenty of emotions attached.
Even Washington’s next opponent isn’t thrilled.
“You never want to see players go down,” said Colorado coach Jared Bednar, whose Avalanche face the Capitals on Thursday night for their second of two meetings over the past week. “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 scored 15 goals in his first 18 games this season to take the league lead and move 27 back of passing Gretzky. Before the injury, he was on pace to break the record sometime in February.
That likely will have to wait until the spring or perhaps early next season after this injury, which could lead to Ovechkin’s longest absence of his two-decade NHL career. He has missed just 59 games total and only 35 because of injury since debuting 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 put Ovechkin on IR and injured winger Sonny Milano on long-term IR with an undisclosed upper-body injury and recalled young Russian winger Ivan Miroshnichenko from Hershey of the American Hockey League. Carbery does not want Miroshnichenko to think he has to fill in for Ovechkin and is still deciding how to proceed with the lineup moving forward.
One possibility on the top line is Jakub Vrana, who along with Ovechkin, Wilson, Carlson and recent trade reacquisition Lars Eller is among the few players remaining from the 2018 Stanley Cup championship team. But it will take more than one player to make up for Ovechkin being out for however long.
“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.”
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