I wouldn’t blame you if you failed to notice the return of the National Hockey League (NHL) this past weekend. I’m not sure how many people were paying attention when the Los Angeles Kings and the Arizona Coyotes tangled on Saturday at the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, Australia. The teams played back-to-back matches “Down Under” in an attempt by the league to “grow the game” internationally.
Here’s hoping the league sprang for first class seats for the LAX-Melbourne flight.
While pre-season ice hockey is better than no ice hockey at all, it is normally to be avoided at all costs. Few regulars see ice time, and nobody wants to get hurt when points are not on the line. Then again, sometimes you’ll see something special, like this goal by Arizona’s Logan Cooley, the #3 pick in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft.
While the Kings and Coyotes were playing half a world away to spread the gospel of ice hockey, NHL teams across North America quietly opened their training camps. Here in the greater Washington-Baltimore Metropolitan Statistical Area, the Washington Capitals hosted the Buffalo Sabres downtown on Sunday afternoon at roughly the same time the Buffalo Bills were visiting the Washington Commanders in Prince George’s County in a nifty feat of sports scheduling jiu-jitsu.
There are a few reasons to be interested in this year’s edition of the Capitals. Alex Ovechkin trails Wayne Gretzky by 72 goals on the league’s all-time scoring list. Depending on how you rack the numbers, it should take Ovechkin just under two full seasons to catch and pass Gretzky. Then again, as we’ve seen in other sports, it isn’t out of the ordinary for superstars to suffer significant regressions in performance as the birthdays roll by and we get closer to 40. Ovechkin turned 38 last week.
The man who is expected to help keep Washington’s offense humming is new head coach Spencer Carbery. He’s very familiar with the team’s personnel, having coached many of them with the East Coast Hockey League’s South Carolina Stingrays and the American Hockey League’s Hershey Bears, both minor league affiliates of the Capitals.
To make that happen, Carbery will have to rely on coaxing more production out of a lineup that looks more or less the same as the one that finished out of the money last season, minus the players who departed at the trade deadline. The only significant addition over the Summer was free agent left wing Max Pacioretty, who is mounting an NHL comeback after not one, but two Achilles tendon injuries. Over the course of his career, he’s earned a reputation of providing instant offense, but he won’t start the season with the team as he continues to rehab.
For the Caps to have any hope of being competitive, Carbery and his staff will have to successfully complete a pair of player reclamation projects: center Evgeny Kuznetsov and right wing Anthony Mantha. Kuznetsov chafed considerably under former head coach Peter Laviolette and it showed on the ice. Kuznetsov is paid like he’s an elite center but hasn’t played like one in a few seasons, which is probably why the organization couldn’t find a team to help fulfill his request for a trade, at least not one willing to part with an elite offensive talent to fill the gap at center.
As for Mantha, he’s a former top prospect who is running out of chances. Acquired from the Detroit Red Wings in April 2021 for Jakub Vrana, Richard Panik and first and second round draft picks in 2022 (quite the haul), Mantha has disappointed in his two full seasons in a Capitals sweater. He’s currently in the final year of a four-year $22.8 million contract he signed with the Red Wings, and he knows that if he doesn’t turn it around this year, there’s no way he makes anywhere near that in his next contract, if any team in the NHL is willing to give him a chance at all.
Given that just as was the case with Kuznetsov, General Manager Brian MacLellan ccouldn’t find a trade partner to take Mantha off Washington’s hands over the Summer, the Quebec native has ample reason to feel the heat. He says that he lost weight in the offseason in the hope of getting quicker and will be closer to 230 pounds by the end of training camp, the same weight he was when he scored 25 goals with the Red Wings in 2018-19.
From where I sit, turning Kuznetsov around is a more important task for Carbery, but my gut tells me success will be elusive. As for Mantha, who has a career on the line, I expect him to revive quite nicely.
The last open question for the team concerns center Nick Backstrom. He missed most of last season as he recovered from having his hip resurfaced (ouch!), and MacLellan made some unmistakable noises that he wasn’t sure that Backstrom had recovered fully enough to be a credible NHL player. But now that he’s back in camp, all of that seems to be in the rearview mirror, at least on the surface. Backstrom says he feels great and MacLellan says he’s satisfied Backstrom has returned to being 100% after the veteran successfully completed the obligatory training camp conditioning skate.
I have my doubts and think this situation requires additional observation. Backstorm has two full seasons remaining on his contract. No player on the roster outside of Ovechkin is paid more at $9.2 million. That’s a price that an elite playmaking center commands, but Backstrom isn’t that player anymore and hasn’t been one for several seasons. On this roster, if you’re being honest, Backstrom slots in for third line minutes behind Kuznetsov and Dylan Strome.
$9.2 million is too much to pay for a third line center. When MacLellan made his comments about Backstrom at the end of last season, it was impossible not to interpret them as a strong suggestion that the veteran retire. If he had, that $9.2 million in cap space could have been used to help the team restructure the roster.
Of course, had he done that, Backstrom would have forfeited $18.4 million and the chance to be on the ice when his buddy Ovechkin breaks Gretzky’s record. When you look at it that way, you could hardly blame him.
However things shake out, Carbery and the roster will get an early test in their season debut when they host the Pittsburgh Penguins at home on October 13. Kyle Dubas, newly hired as general manager in Pittsburgh after his dramatic exit from Toronto, wasted no time getting to work, figuring out a way to acquire talented defenseman Eric Karlsson from the San Jose Sharks. Dubas and his bosses at the Fenway Sports Group, the owners of the Penguins, are determined that Sidney Crosby’s twilight years will not be marked exclusively by decline. That game should not be missed.
Until then, I’m still concentrating on baseball and football, as painful as that might be. More on that sad story tomorrow.