Coach Carbs gives the Junkies an Ovi update and some thoughts on the OT loss to San Jose
Spencer Carbery had a nice quiet Thanksgiving, and then a couple weekend wins before a loss on Tuesday night snapped the Caps’ four-game winning streak…but that’s nothing compared to the fact that Alex Ovechkin was spotted doing some light skating at the practice facility by someone adjacent to the Junkies!
Just two weeks after he was lost for four to six with a fracture fibula, well, here we are?
“Oh, you guys got people undercover everywhere, eh? But yeah, he skated, which is positive, and that’s sort of the first step of him getting into his skates,” Carbery told the Junks. “It was nothing crazy intense, he wasn't wearing any equipment, but it's good to see that everything's on track, and he'll just continue to check boxes as he works his way back. I think the next step will be putting on some gear and going through some individual stuff, and then we'll slowly work him back.”
The Caps are 4-2-1 without Ovi but have scored 24 goals in those three games, with four in the three losses and 20 in the four wins…so it’s clear the firepower is there without him, as long as it shows up.
“If you’re not doing the right things to score, that's the thing that I focus on. If you're not doing all the little things that it requires to score, that's what I focus on, and so we weren't willing to do enough of those things last night,” Carbs said of the 2-1 loss to the Sharks. “It’s hard to score in this league, and some nights, the pucks will go in for you so it feels easier, and other nights you play the hot goaltender or don’t get clean bounces and things don’t go your way. Those nights it’s really hard to score, so you have to try to be as consistent as possible with those hard things. If you do those consistently, you'll score consistently, but if you get away from them, you'll have nights like you saw last night.”
It was especially tough because the Caps feel like they thrive in OT games, but this one didn’t work out.
“I feel like we can play with anybody in overtime, because it's a matter skill does take over; the more people you remove from the ice sheet, it becomes who is the fastest, best hands, best shot,” Carbs said. “There’s a lot of really elite players in this league, and we have some of them, but I would say we feel like we can beat you with good structure and playing as a unit and we don't need necessarily one-on-one. We can do it as a group with a team of world-class players, and we have four great lines and three deep pairs of defensemen, so we’re going to beat you in strength in numbers.”
Listen to Carbs’ entire visit above, as he also discusses facing former top assistant turned Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky last night, Dylan Strome’s rough luck with high sticks, and more!
