Capitals place Michael Sgarbossa on waivers

The Washington Capitals hit the ice at MedStar Capitals Iceplex for their second practice since the pause and thankfully nothing too newsworthy happened today. No news is good news as nobody else got added to COVID protocol. But news still happened and that news was the team placing forward Michael Sgarbossa on waivers.

The Caps hope to have all four of their top centers back for the first time this season on Wednesday night when the team hosts the Nashville Predators. That means Evgeny Kuznetsov and Nicklas Backstrom are set to come off COVID protocol and join forces with Lars Eller and Nic Dowd.

This reinforcement is why the team decided to risk putting Sgarbossa on waivers with the hopes of him clearing at 1 p.m. tomorrow to report back to the Hershey Bears. All 31 other NHL teams have 24 hours to claim him. He won’t actually go to the Bears though, this move allows the Caps to place him on their taxi squad which was brought back to fight against the new COVID variant.

Sgarbossa has two goals and an assist for three points in seven games for the Caps this season. He was an extra at practice today.

Here were the forward lines and defensive pairs via Sammi Silber of Washington Hockey Now:

Ovechkin-Kuznetsov-Wilson
Sheary-Backstrom-Protas
McMichael-Eller-Hathaway
Sgarbossa

Orlov-Carlson
Kempny-TvR
Alexeyev-Irwin
Johansen

The NHL and the Caps also announced during this writing that their game scheduled on Jan. 4 against the Montreal Canadiens has been postponed. That’s the Caps fourth postponement this season. With the NHL not going to the Olympics, look for the makeup dates to be around that February time frame.

Tomorrow we’ll find out Sgarbossa’s fate as well as cross our fingers that Caps hockey returns for the first time in 10 days. Technically that’s the old quarantine am I right?