Capitals put Alex Ovechkin on IR, Ivan Miroshnichenko recalls

ARLINGTON, Va. — Alex Ovechkin is on injured reserve and the Washington Capitals are coming to terms with playing without their superstar captain for the coming weeks.

Ovechkin is considered week-to-week with a lower left leg injury, and going on IR will rule him out for at least the next three games. The absence pauses his pursuit of Wayne Gretzky’s NHL career goal record and takes the best pure scorer of this generation off the ice so far.

“He’s the hottest guy in the league and he’s chasing something bigger than hockey,” longtime teammate Tom Wilson said after practice Wednesday. “I think everybody in the hockey world just feels that kind of failure, that feeling that you just pull for him and he puts everything he’s got into it. He feels all that pressure.

“The whole hockey world is just rooting for him. So to come into (the locker room) and see that he was hurt, it hurt a little bit as a teammate, but at the end of the day, that’s hockey.”

Ovechkin, 39, was injured in a shin-on-rail collision with Utah’s Jack McBain on Monday night. The winger went down in obvious pain, then tried to skate and test the leg minutes later before limping down the tunnel.

Coach Spencer Carbery confirmed it was not a season-ending injury and expects a more specific diagnosis and time frame to be available Thursday after further evaluation by doctors. Carbery described Ovechkin’s initial reaction as “bumpy,” while veteran defenseman John Carlson said Ovechkin handled it “like a human,” with plenty of emotion attached.

Even Washington’s next opponent isn’t thrilled.

“You never want to see players go down,” Colorado Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said. “But then you put in a situation like Ovi, where he’s chasing greatness, and you want to see him healthy and be able to pursue that: a great start to the season, even coming off the night he got hurt. Hopefully it won’t be long and he’s able to come back. Injuries are part of it, I think everyone has to deal with them, but I definitely want to see him get healthy and continue to pursue that goal.

Ovechkin scored 15 goals in his first 18 games this season to lead the league and move 27 behind Gretzky. Before the injury, he was in the process of breaking the record sometime in February.

That will likely have to wait until the spring or perhaps early next season after this injury, which could lead to Ovechkin’s longest absence of his two-decade NHL career. He has missed just 59 games in total and only 35 due to injury since debuting in 2005.

“I had a little deja vu about just being in the locker room before we go on the ice and — almost every time — he’s there,” Carlson said. “There are minutes to be played and goals to be scored.”

The Capitals placed Ovechkin on IR and injured winger Sonny Milano on long-term IR with an undisclosed upper-body injury and recalled young Russian winger Ivan Miroshnichenko from Hershey of the American Hockey League. Carbery doesn’t want Miroshnichenko to think he has to fill in for Ovechkin and is still deciding how to proceed with the lineup moving forward.

One option on the top line is Jakub Vrana, who along with Ovechkin, Wilson, Carlson and recent trade reacquisition Lars Eller are among the few players remaining from the 2018 Stanley Cup championship. But it will take more than one player to make up for Ovechkin being out this long.

“We’re going to face reality,” Vrana said. “Obviously, it’s difficult. He’s our captain and everything. But at the same time, it is what it is. And we’re going to prepare to win games without him.”