It’s all about fixing the little things in practice for the Capitals

The Washington Capitals had another weird week with an early week game and no games until the weekend. But that didn’t mean they weren’t hard at work practicing and preparing for the grind ahead which features another weekend back to back. In fact, from some of the beat reporters that were there, things looked to be spirited at the practices at MedStar Capitals Iceplex.

Tuesday in particular, coming off a 7-3 loss the night before to the Boston Bruins, brought an intense 70 minute session. Peter Laviolette said this at the end of the skate:

"“I think everybody hates losing. I mean the players hate losing, so I don’t think anybody’s in a great mood today. … I think everybody’s probably grumpy.”"

The goaltending needs to step it up and perhaps even possibly get it tweaked. Turnovers have proven costly and there’s some weaknesses on the blue line. The power play? Yeah I think we’ve ranted about it enough.

Friday’s practice brought some good news as Alex Ovechkin was on the ice after leaving Thursday’s practice before it even began and taking Tuesday off for maintenance. He was dealing with an upper body injury but if he feels good in the morning he’s good to go tomorrow afternoon.

Lars Eller echoed Laviolette’s remarks Tuesday:

"“Last game, it felt awful leaving the rink. It felt awful in the third period. Embarrassing. It shouldn’t happen to us at home.”"

Eller had even more to say:

"“That shouldn’t happen to us on home ice like it did last game. I’ve been left with a feeling you don’t often leave with. Probably a lot of guys felt that way and the guys’ competitive nature shows up sometimes in practice the next day. So yeah, the compete level should be high and it was today.”"

Here were the lines at Friday’s practice via Samantha Pell of The Washington Post:

Ovechkin-Kuznetsov-Oshie
Sprong-Backstrom-Wilson
Sheary-Dowd-Hathaway
McMichael-Eller-Leason

Fehervary-Carlson
TvR-Jensen
Irwin-Schultz

The Caps have dealt with injuries and COVID outbreaks. Even a non COVID outbreak. All season long something’s been up. It’s only been until now where the things we feared would happen are starting to happen.

But adversity is good for any team. Even the 2017-18 Stanley Cup winning team had their shares of adversity throughout the season. It’s what you do with the adversity that fans and the media will remember and talk about. It’s up to the Caps to see what kind of identity they can have in 2022.