A backup on blue line

Defensemen face a crowded competition for playing time

Before each game, when Capitals coach Spencer Carbery and assistant Mitch Love sketch out Washington’s lineup, they have six slots to fill on the blue line. Only of them is filled out in Sharpie: John Carlson on the right side of the top pair.

The other five names have changed, both in placement among the three pairs and in the lineup, nearly every night in recent weeks. With the addition of Ethan Bear in late December, Washington has eight NHL-caliber defensemen on the active roster. And after Rasmus Sandin’s return Tuesday from an eight-game absence with an upper-body injury, all eight of them are healthy, giving Carbery and Love a full complement of players to choose from.

Forty-six games into the 82-game schedule, having more viable options than lineup slots both allows the Capitals to do things such as give a player a maintenance day — Joel Edmundson took a night off Jan. 3, the second night of a back-to-back, before Sandin was injured — and ensures that the players who dress each night have to play well to keep their spots.

“I’m not going to guarantee that it’ll be a rotation every single night, but now it gives us the luxury to be able to play seven guys, eight,” Carbery said Jan. 3. “And [Alex Alexeyev is] in that group, too. I know he hasn’t played in a long time, but seven veteran defenseman that I would call them. And there’s a little bit of an accountability part to it, too. You’ve got to have your game in a good spot to stay in the lineup on the back end.”

At that point, Alexeyev was something of an afterthought in the group and had been a healthy scratch for 18 straight games.

His streak stretched to 24 before he returned to the lineup Jan. 18 against St. Louis. Sandin’s return Tuesday against the Minnesota Wild took Alexeyev back out of the lineup after a three-game stint, but Alexeyev nonetheless impressed the coaching staff and made his case to play on any given night.

“He deserves a ton of credit,” Carbery said Tuesday morning. “To sit a full month or however many games it was, come back in, I thought his first two games were excellent, and that is not an easy feat to sit that long and come back into game action. … That was a good three-game set for him, and he should feel real good about his game. We get back to eight with Sandin coming back, [but] his next opportunity going back in there, we as a staff feel very, very confident. He should feel good about his game as well.”

Alexeyev, 23, is the type of player typically expected to be scrapping for playing time on a nightly basis. It wasn’t a shock to see Bear, too, take a seat as a scratch against the Wild, given that he’s new to the Capitals organization and still finding his footing after offseason shoulder surgery. But the competition for a lineup spot also extends to veterans such as Trevor van Riemsdyk, who was a lineup mainstay in the first half of the season but has been a healthy scratch four times since Jan. 2 — including three times in the past five games.

Van Riemsdyk sat out against Anaheim on Jan. 16, returned against St. Louis in the next game, sat again in St. Louis on Jan. 20, played against the Wild and was scratched again in Colorado on Wednesday. The last week has been difficult for Washington defensively, which has contributed to Carbery and Love changing the mix on a near-nightly basis.

“It’s not ideal for TvR to go into a game and then come back out,” Carbery said before Wednesday’s game. “Thought he struggled last night. It’s hard to do that, right? You go back in, and now all of a sudden, you’re trying to get into a rhythm, and you sat. There’s significant challenges with that, and I understand that. But at the same time, it’s competition with eight guys that all want to be in the lineup and have good arguments to be in the lineup. It’s difficult on those guys, but they’ve got to seize their opportunity.”

In Wednesday’s 6-2 loss to the Avalanche, Sandin slid into the left side of the top pair alongside Carlson, while Martin Fehervary skated with Bear on the second pair. Edmundson and Nick Jensen formed the third pair, which has been the most consistent duo for the Capitals in recent games. But after an ugly night against the Avalanche, Carbery and Love again could alter the mix on the back end before Saturday’s game in Dallas.

And if they do, having two players waiting in the wings for their opportunity gives them the ability to enforce accountability and a high level of competition for playing time.