Baltimore Sun

Vrana’s consistenc­y, confidence has Caps hoping for a breakout

- By Samantha Pell samantha.pell@washpost.com twitter.com/SamanthaJP­ell don.markus@baltsun.com twitter.com/sportsprof­56

CALGARY, ALBERTA — Jakub Vrana sat and marveled at the twig that produced history.

Alex Ovechkin brought the stick he used his rookie season, when Ovechkin scored 52 goals, into the team’s dressing room before the Washington Capitals’ first extended road trip of the season to western Canada. Vrana had seen it before, on YouTube, when he would watch Ovechkin highlights growing up. Now, seeing it in person, it made Vrana wonder: Why couldn’t he replicate Ovechkin’s early productivi­ty in his young career?

Vrana, 22, is in his second season with the Capitals, and played a key role last postseason, when the team won its first Stanley Cup in franchise history. This season, Vrana was playing well early and getting chances at the net, but the effort went mostly unrewarded on the stat sheet. That’s finally changing. Vrana scored his second goal of the season Saturday in a 4-3 shootout win against Calgary, recording his fourth point in four games. His maturation and early consistenc­y in this sophomore season have the Capitals envisionin­g their young player, and Stanley Cup celebrator extraordin­aire, as a potential breakout offensive star — even if the puck struggled to find the net early.

“You want to feel confident there, and obviously the confidence is not there when you get those chances and you cannot bury them,” Vrana said. “So you have to find a way to get your confidence back, and that is [at] practice. That is what you do. You go practice and you go practice even more. Like I said, eventually it is going to go in.”

After scoring an early goal against Pittsburgh in the second game of the season, he didn’t record a point until he had a goal and an assist in the Capitals’ 6-5 shootout loss to the Florida Panthers on Oct. 19. He notched another assist in the Capi- Jakub Vrana, 22, is in his second season with the Capitals, and played a key role last postseason, when the team won its first Stanley Cup. tals’ 5-2 win over the Vancouver Canucks, a laser-point pass to defenseman John Carlson, who redirected the puck past Canucks goalie Anders Nilsson.

“You just kind of stay positive when you have those couple games where you really work hard and work for your chances and nothing really goes in,” Vrana said. “You kind of stay positive and keep working and keep working even more and good things will happen.”

In an up-and-down rookie year, Vrana scored 13 goals with 14 assists in 73 games. He was at his best in the playoffs, though, finishing with three goals, including the first goal of Washington’s Cup-clinching Game 5 win against the Vegas Golden Knights.

“He has been a little more consistent in his game than maybe compared to last year,” Capitals center Lars Eller said. “His effort has been more consistent. … It’s something that comes with maturity and age and experience and understand­ing what is going to make him successful down the line.”

Vrana on Saturday skated alongside Ovechkin and center Evgeny Kuznetsov on the top line. On Friday, Vrana tried to describe the different characteri­stics of playing on that line. First, he started with Ovechkin: pure goal scorer. Then, Kuznetsov: playmaker. Then himself: “I can fit in there.”

Pressed on it, Vrana continued: “I think I’m kind of 50-50 [of Ovechkin and Kuznetsov] …. I used to score lots and lots of goals, and then I have a lot of assists for goals and then it fit like half and half and half assists and half goals.”

So, the hope is to be a player with the goal- scoring abilities of Ovechkin and skating, playmaking abilities of Kuznetsov?

“Yeah, maybe,” Vrana said, with a chuckle. “I know I ama good player. I am a confident player. You just have to show it on the ice.” McDonald’s All American Jalen Smith (Mount Saint Joseph), Cowan has more options to look for than he did last year.

“Every particular night it’s different, whatever the team needs,” he said. “Some nights scoring is easy and maybe I’ll try to get easy buckets, Maybe somebody is on a big roll and hitting a lot of shots and I need to try getting them the ball. I’ll do whatever I have to do to make sure that we win.”

Similar to the role Trimble played when Cowan was a freshman, Cowan could spend more time off the ball as a scorer with the addition of freshman point guard Eric Ayala.

“It puts me to the 2 [guard], which mainly means just score a little bit more,” Cowan said.

Turgeon, who played point guard for some pretty good teams at Kansas in the 1980s, likes how Cowan has evolved.

“I’m really proud of Anthony, because Anthony by nature is a quiet kid,” Turgeon said. “What he’s done preparing for Italy [for a summer tour] and the start of the season, I think you’ll appreciate how far he’s come as a leader and a passer and a facilitato­r but also as a dynamic scorer for us. A lot of positives.”

 ?? DARRYL DYCK/ASSOCIATED PRESS ??
DARRYL DYCK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

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