After just three days of Training Camp, the Washington Capitals will get their 2024 preseason underway on Sunday afternoon.
Capital One Arena will host the Capitals and Philadelphia Flyers at 3 pm. Caps head coach Spencer Carbery will get his first look at his team behind the bench in his second season.
Washington will sport a lineup featuring veteran NHL players, minor leaguers, and prospects.
Hendrix Lapierre, Sonny Milano, Ivan Miroshnichenko, Mike Sgarbossa, Alex Alexeyev, Ethan Bear, Hardy Häman Aktell, Vincent Iorio, and Trevor van Riemsdyk are the lone players who played NHL games with Washington last season scheduled to get a jersey.
Top prospects Terik Parascak, Andrew Cristall, Cam Allen, and Leon Muggli will feature alongside Jakub Vrana, playing in his first game wearing a Capitals jersey since April 11, 2021.
Calder Cup champions from the Hershey Bears, including Ethen Frank, Henrik Rybinski, Alex Limoges, Clay Stevenson, and Hunter Shepard, will also play roles. Bears assistant coaches Patrick Wellar and Nick Bootland will also join Carbery behind the bench.
“[I’m looking for] a couple things,” Carbery said. “Just implement a little bit of what we’ve talked about, so see some of the structure stuff, see what guys it comes naturally to and are able to incorporate it into their game right away. Competitiveness is an easy one, pace to our game is another one that I’ll talk about. And then, after that, it’s important because you can sometimes get in these moments as a young player, whether it’s your first NHL exhibition game or you’ve played two or three, you can become paralyzed by, “Am I in the right spot? Am I doing the right thing with my line-mates?” And that I don’t want.
“Each one of these guys is here for a reason and competing for a spot on our team for a reason and they all have different skill sets in what they do at an elite level, so any opportunity that they have to show that skill set that they have, I want them to take advantage of. Whether they’re a physical player and you go in as F1 and you get an opportunity to finish a check, whether you’re a creative pass-first guy, whether you’re a puck-retreater, whether you’re a guy that lives at the net front, I want to see you be able to do those things and when those opportunities come up in the game, take advantage of those opportunities.”
Most of the roster was put together in Group A for practice and ran through line rushes.
Lapierre’s line with Frank and Vrana will mirror the ultra-fast and dominant first line that the Hershey Bears used successfully in last year’s playoffs. Lapierre tallied 22 points (7g, 15a) to lead the AHL in postseason scoring while on that line, which also included Frank (17 points) and Joe Snively (18 points). Vrana takes the place of Snively, who signed with the Detroit Red Wings in July.
Mike Sgarbossa left Saturday’s practice during warmups after taking a puck to the face. The veteran center needed medical attention on the ice and did not return for the skate. He will likely be replaced by Riley Sutter in Sunday’s lineup.
The afternoon matchup will be televised on both Monumental Sports Network and NHL Network. Washington will play six total preseason games this fall against four different clubs.
All other Capitals players not involved in the game will practice and scrimmage at MedStar Capitals Iceplex. The team is then scheduled to have a full day off on Monday.
The Flyers have also announced their roster for the game. Matvei Michkov, who Philadelphia drafted one pick ahead of the Capitals in the 2023 NHL Draft, is slated to make his NHL exhibition debut.
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