Washington Capitals News: More informal skates as we near training camp with Jakub Vrana here

The Washington Capitals held some informal skates on Thursday morning. Among the players who participated the lineup included Jakub Vrana who signed a professional tryout agreement last week. He joined John Carlson, Patrick Roy, Pierre-Luc Dubois, Aliaksei Protas, Vincent Iorio and many more per Tarik El-Bashir of Monumental Sports Network.

Also on social media via Twiter/X, the Capitals shared their favorite nicknames throughout the course of their 50 years of franchise history.

Also on X Sammi Silber of The Hockey News shared a photo of new goaltender Logan Thompson in his goalie gear:

Now earlier this morning we talked about Alex Ovechkin entering year 20 which is hard to believe in the first place. Michael Derosa of The Hockey News would say this about the Great 8:

""Crosby's longtime rival and fellow superstar, Alex Ovechkin, is also entering the 20th year of his NHL career. The 2004-05 lockout meant Ovechkin started his career at the same time as Crosby, despite being drafted first overall by the Washington Capitals the year before.""

Derosa/The Hockey News

Derosa also added that "similar to (Sidney) Crosby (who also enters year 20) Ovechkin is still a star at this juncture of his career. The 38 year old's numbers last season were a bit down compared to years prior but were still good." We know the stats and it was 31 goals and 65 pionts in 79 games that made it OK to believe.

It was even more OK to believe when 22 of his goals came after the All Star Break. And before that he had 50 and 42 goals in the seasons prior so there's potential for an uptick. And we know he needs 42 goals from passing Wayne Gretzky. He has his sights set on that plus the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Ovechkin also was mentioned for fantasy by Corey Abbott of CBS Sports.com among the top 100 players for fantasy at #57 which in our opinion is a little too high for a guy trying to break one of hockey's most storied records.