The Washington Capitals were without Martin Fehervary for their entire playoff run due to a season-ending knee injury the Slovakian defenseman suffered on April 15 against the New York Islanders.
After the Capitals announced the news on April 22, Spencer Carbery said his team “absolutely can still win… we can absolutely play well and still win hockey games without him.”
But the team only lasted 10 games in the postseason, losing their second-round series against the Carolina Hurricanes four games to one. Against a smothering Canes offense, Carbery went down to only five defensemen at times, keeping Fehervary’s replacement, Alex Alexeyev, on the bench for long stretches. Among Caps rearguards, Alexeyev averaged the lowest average ice time per game at 10:24, over five minutes lower than his third-pairing partner, Trevor van Riemsdyk (15:57).
“I think we knew, our players knew, our staff knew, that when we lost Marty, and I don’t think the rest of the hockey world really knows, how significant of a player as he is for our team,” Carbery said on Breakdown Day, Saturday. “He does a lot of things that go unnoticed, and so we knew it was a significant blow to our back end.
“I still would agree with what I said at the time, is we could still, and we’ve won a series in the first round against Montreal without Marty, but it was a massive blow to lose him.”
Fehervary spent most of the season skating on the second pairing with Matt Roy and shutting down other teams’ best players. Despite those activations, Fehervary posted the third-highest shot-attempts percentage (51.6) at five-on-five among Capitals defensemen. In fact, the 25-year-old rearguard tilted the ice for the Capitals in every major possession category at five-on-five, with the team posting positive differentials in goals (+1), scoring chances (+56), and high-danger chances (+29). Fehervary also led all Capitals defensemen in penalty kill minutes this season with 245:34.
“He’s a huge part of our team,” John Carlson said. “He’s just a guy that you can put wherever and you just know that you’re going to get his best game every single night. And that’s a huge hole to fill. And I think also with injury sometimes it’s that mental kind of let down too, in terms of, not that he waved the white flag, but just in terms of I think you feel bad for him. You feel like you know what he’s worth to the team and what he is capable of accomplishing. It was a huge loss for us, and I think we felt it.”
Due to Fehervary’s injury, the Capitals’ top four all saw increases in their ice time during the playoffs. Carlson, who averaged 23:33 of ice time in the regular season, saw his minutes increase in the postseason to 24:15. Meanwhile, Matt Roy (4:00), Jakob Chychrun (2:49), and Rasmus Sandin (2:07) saw their average ice time increase by several minutes.
“He was playing terrific for us all year,” Sandin said. “We switch the D pairings up a little bit during the games, and you kind of have a feel for every player that you’ve been playing with all year.
“It’s tough timing, too, with (Fehervary’s injury happening in) game 81,” he added. “I really felt bad for Marty because I know how much he really wanted to help the team succeed in the playoffs. So it was tough to see him on the sidelines there.”
