Does This Older Washington Capitals Team Have Potential Injury Issues?

The injury bug can strike any team, at any time, in any sport. Most teams, mostly by luck, are able to avoid it. For other teams, it can bite, and it’s bite hurts, no pun intended. For the team and the fans, it sucks. Washington Capitals fans found that out late last season.

The Capitals were a good team for pretty much the entire shortened 2021 season. Then very close to the end of the season that dreaded injury bug crawled its ugly head right into the Washington locker room.

At the end of the season you had Alex Ovechkin get hurt, Nicklas Backstrom went down, John Carlson had a nasty injury, Lars Eller was fighting off some things, T.J. Oshie got banged up late. This also didn’t stop in the playoffs as the then starter Vitek Vanecek got hurt shortly into his playoff debut.

The bug bit, and for Capitals fans, it was hard to watch.

You just hope it doesn’t happen again for the Caps this season. Yet they come into this new season already a little banged up which isn’t the most encouraging sign.

Washington is still dealing with Nicklas Backstrom’s injury from last season and Alex Ovechkin is currently day-to-day with the season just hours away now. In no way can you say that this Capitals team is injury prone. I think you still need to see a bunch of injuries in a row to the same guys to be able to say that.

However, I think there should be some injury concerns for this team. One main reason for that is the age of this team, and the age of the most important players for this team. Should the Caps be worried about injuries to their older stars?

Right now, as we said, Backstrom is still dealing with a hip injury from last season. That would worry me if I’m a fan. To me, there are several injuries that scare me long term, some of these injuries vary across sports. Those injuries are, hamstring (you don’t see that impact hockey players as much as other sports) back, groin and I think you should include the hip on that list.

You can and probably should throw head injuries in there as well.

Those injuries tend to be nagging injuries that take a long time to completely go away. The fact that Backstrom is still dealing with it and the season is here concerns me. This will be a wait and see thing for when Backstrom comes back how much that injury will stick with him. It would not be the first time someone thinks they are clear from a long nagging injury and they get a reality check when that injury gets put to the truest test again.

Something that also scares me is the health of one of the healthiest players, possibly ever, Alex Ovechkin. The Capitals captain has played in nearly 1,200 NHL games and has played in close to 150 career playoff games. He has also played in over 100 games for the Russian national team as a pro.

Wear and tear is a term that comes to mind when you talk about someone like Ovechkin. Hopefully, we are not starting to see the beginning of that. I’ve personally noticed more over the last couple of seasons Ovechkin is going back to the bench more often with a grimace or some kind of injury concern.

Last season, he actually got injured enough to miss a bunch of games at the end of the season. The injury was bad enough to force him out of the lineup when the Capitals were fighting for first place in the division.

Maybe that is a one off injury, who knows. I’m not in the prediction or fortune telling business.

I’d still be concerned about the wear and tear on Ovechkin though. It would not be the first time an athlete stays healthy for the vast majority of his career then runs into injury problems later.

Ovechkin got hurt on a very innocent looking play in the last game of the preseason. He did not return to that game. Perhaps they were just playing it safe with the face of the franchise. He could be back at the very start of the season on Wednesday.

I don’t know if that injury means something, but I don’t think it’s nothing. Ovechkin’s health is something to keep an eye on going forward.

Another older guy on the Capitals to keep an eye on is T.J. Oshie. Oshie will be 35-years-old in December. He is also a guy who tends to be dealing with some kind of injury during a season.

In his thirteen year NHL career Oshie has never played a full season. He has come close a couple of times. He played in 80 games in 2011-12 and his first season in D.C. which was 2015-16. He also played in every game in the 2019-20 season before it was stopped, that was 69 games. He played in 79 games in 2013-14 as well.

Again, I wouldn’t say Oshie is injury prone at all. But during a season it seems like Oshie is one of those guys who will be dealing with something that’s going to keep him out for stretches of a season.

That’s three key players that I have injury concerns for going into the season. All of these key players are on the wrong side of thirty, some now on the wrong side of thirty-five. Injuries get harder to fight off the older you get. They also get harder to get rid of quickly when you start to get towards the end of your career. A lot of the Capitals key players are older as well.

This is a Capitals team that, according to Elite Prospects, had the oldest team in the league last season. Their average age may drop this season with some older guys moving on, but that still doesn’t change the fact that the guys they rely on most are the older guys.

We might be able to look back in April or even later and say that my concerns were for nothing. For the Capitals sake I definitely hope so. Washington can’t have another season like last season where all their key guys get banged up. If that happens, it will be another wasted year in the Ovechkin era, and another year without a Cup when they have a decent chance at winning one.