Alex Ovechkin<\/a>\u00a0also expects it to be strange to play against him for the first time.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s going to be tough, but it\u2019s a business,\u201d Ovechkin said. \u201cHe\u2019s a great friend, unbelievable leader. I miss this guy in the locker room.\u201d<\/p>\n
After going through so much with Ovechkin, Carlson acknowledged, \u201cIt will be a little bit of a weird feeling,\u201d to line up against him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think once the game starts, after the first few shifts, it will feel more normal,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve played against him in the Olympics, so at least I have had that experience. But I played with those guys for a long time, put a lot of hours in on the road and friendships and all that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carlson is starting to build new friendships with the Lightning and appreciates the opportunity he has with them, playing on their top defense pair and quarterbacking their first power-play unit.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a blast so far,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been fun getting into the community and all that and my kids set up in all their stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carlson was always one of Washington\u2019s most competitive players, even hating to lose during practice drills. His former teammates expect to see his best effort Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s definitely not going to take it easy on us,\u201d Wilson said.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay doesn\u2019t play at Washington this season until March 15, but it will \u201cprobably\u201d be more emotional because it will be his first time playing in the building he called home for so long.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think early on in the season, there’s a lot of stuff going too,\u201d he said. \u201cEveryone is kind of trying to find their footing, get used to new things, especially kind of emphasize with the shortened camp as well. So, that\u2019s where we’re at right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that one will probably feel a lot different.\u201d<\/p>\n
That won\u2019t make Carlson want to win the game Saturday any less, though, particularly with the Lightning coming off a disappointing performance in their season opener.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t get off on the right foot, and, at the end of the day, it is a game,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve played in a lot of different types of games before, meaningful and whacky and weird. So, at the end of the day, you navigate those as quickly as possible and there\u2019s a game to be won.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlson\u2019s place in Capitals history is secure, and they will likely retire his No. 74 whenever his playing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":869892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-869891","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\/869891","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=869891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}