Capitals Writer Mike Vogel Offers His Take On ‘Life Without Ovechkin’

Mike Vogel, the Washington Capitals in-house reporter, has published a short piece on what Ovechkin’s loss will mean for the Capitals and who will have to step up to fill the scoring void.

How do you replace Alex Ovechkin? You don’t. It would take a village (so to speak) to even vaguely approximate what he brings to the ice on a nightly basis.

In addition to being the Capitals’ emotional leader on the ice, Ovechkin leads all NHL forwards in ice-time-per-game and leads the league in scoring with 14 goals and 9 assists; with 23 points, Ovechkin has had a hand in nearly half of the Capitals 47 goals this season.

Vogel acknowledges that 23 minutes of ice time can easily be allocated among the rest of the Capitals’ forwards and predicts that forwards Nicklas Backstrom, Alexander Semin, and Brooks Laich will all see their minutes go up slightly to compensate for Ovechkin’s absence. Vogel also predicts a significant increase in minutes for either Eric Fehr or Tomas Fleischmann, as one of the two forwards should move into the top six. Fehr was recently cleared to play after missing a few games with bruised ribs, and Fleischmann has looked great in his first two games with the Capitals after missing almost all of October recovering from deep vein thrombosis. Finally, Vogel suggests that the team might recall LW Alexandre Giroux from Hershey to round out the forward corps.

Replacing Ovechkin’s scoring production will be significantly more difficult than spreading his minutes around. Said Capitals’ Coach Bruce Boudreau of what the team will have to do in Ovechkin’s absence:

We have to buckle down. A goal a game, he scores. We’ve got to play better defense. We can’t allow four goals and 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.

Unfortunately for the Capitals, playing without Ovechkin has not led to much success. In the four games that Ovechkin has missed in his career, the Capitals are 1-3 and have been outscored by a combined total of 15-7 in those games.

Every player in the league wants more ice time. Starting on Wednesday when Washington visits New Jersey, some of the boys in the red, white and blue sweaters are going to start getting more ice. It will be interesting to see what they do with it.

And for how long they’ll have to do it.