Alex Ovechkin will play play his first game of the preseason Thursday against the Boston Bruins, Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery confirmed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited to see him tonight and get out there and get a game under his belt, and start to get some of those game reps, game touches,\u201d Carbery said. \u201cWith [Opening Night] a week away, I think this is a good time. It gives him a couple of opportunities to get into games and a few practice days to get ramped up for Wednesday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ovechkin was one of 13 forwards listed on the Capitals\u2019 game roster the night before<\/a>, as was Sonny Milano, who had been rehabbing<\/a> an upper-body injury suffered three days ago<\/a> but is expected to suit up on Thursday as well. Milano leads the team with four goals and six points this preseason.<\/p>\n Per NHL.com\u2019s Tom Gulitti<\/a>, Ovechkin will skate on a line with Ivan Miroshnichenko and Ilya Protas, with Little Pro at center.<\/p>\n The 40-year-old Ovechkin has missed the team\u2019s four previous exhibition games this fall after suffering a lower-body injury on the first day of training camp<\/a>. Carbery told reporters last week he wanted the team captain to get into two games ahead of Opening Night on October 8<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIs it the end-all, be-all for him to play two exhibition games? No,\u201d Carbery said then. \u201cBut the ideal world is he gets two games before the start of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n The home matchup, the team\u2019s first at Capital One Arena this preseason, will be another big opportunity for players on the bubble to make a big impression on Carbery and Capitals management. Players suiting up on Thursday include Sheldon Rempal, Andrew Cristall, Hendrix Lapierre, Ethen Frank, Ilya Protas, Ivan Miroshnichenko, Eriks Mateiko, and Vincent Iorio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Ovechkin will play play his first game of the preseason Thursday against the Boston Bruins, Capitals head…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-198314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}