John Carlson’s ice time is rising as the Capitals’ injury problems mount

The New York Rangers are a better hockey team than the Capitals, and there’s not much arguing about it. They showed it over the course of the regular season, when they posted the NHL’s best record. And they are showing it over the course of this first-round Stanley Cup playoff series, which they now lead 3-0 following Friday night’s 3-1 win.

The frustrating part for the Capitals and their fans, though, isn’t so much that the Rangers are winning. It’s that they’re beating a shell of the Caps team that should be representing itself in the playoffs. More than that, they’re getting games that don’t represent playoff games to do it — what with all the penalties, so many penalties. Those get the Caps out of their best chance to win, which is grinding the Rangers down in five-on-five rather than unveiling their feeble power play, on which New York is as likely to score as Washington.

“We just really, really are struggling to just make that last play, right?” Coach Spencer Carbery, looking beaten down, said late Friday. “Just whatever it is, whether it’s shoot it in the back of the net … or whether it’s to make one, two, three, four passes.”

The biggest problem is, as Carbery said, “We’re very, very limited with what we can do offensively.” But the other problem is that this group is losing players by the day.

A lean team that made the playoffs by nabbing the last spot in its final regular season game would be hard-pressed to beat the Rangers in any circumstance. But the Caps entered this series down regular defensemen Rasmus Sandin and Nick Jensen, both of whom suffered injuries in the waning days of the regular season. Between them, they logged more than 40 minutes of ice time every game. The Caps hoped one or both would return Friday night. That did not happen.

And then, with just under eight minutes remaining in the first period of Game 3, Matt Rempe, the Rangers’ mountain of a rookie center, ran into Caps defenseman Trevor Van Riemsdyk after Van Riemsdyk had played the puck away. The collision behind the Capitals’ net was violent. Van Riemsdyk crumpled to the ice, and didn’t return.

“That’s a dirty hit,” said Washington center Nic Dowd.

That’s an opinion, and parsing any of this is difficult in slow motion, let alone in real time. The end result for Washington, which was already using emergency defensemen Dylan McIlrath and Lucas Johansen, was a defensive corps thinner than a place mat. Remember, with Jensen and Sandin already out, 21-year-old defenseman Vincent Iorio — another body who should be playing at minor league Hershey rather than in the Stanley Cup playoffs — went down after a hard check in Game 1.

“I’m sick and tired of losing defenseman to quote, ‘clean hits,’ though, that’s for sure,” the veteran defenseman said. “Whether it’s the end of the regular season or in the playoffs, it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating how guys can get injured and it’s legal.”

The frustrations do nothing to solve the Caps’ personnel problems. And as the absences mount, the burden falls to Carlson. No player across the league is seeing more ice time in these playoffs, and it’s not particularly close. Friday night, he played more than half the game. This series has lasted 180 minutes so far. Carlson has been on the ice for 88 minutes, 43 seconds, darn near half of it.

“It’s — whatever,” Carlson said, dismissing the idea that the heavy minutes might represent a lopsided amount of responsibility. He is in his 15th year in the NHL, and each of his 1,009 regular season games — and 126 more in the playoffs — have come wearing a Capitals sweater. He sometimes gets overlooked in the Alex Ovechkin-Nicklas Backstrom pantheon of franchise linchpins. He just keeps playing. Friday night, he scored the Caps’ only goal.

“I know that he’s a world-class player, and he’s a guy who’s played big minutes his whole career,” said Rangers Coach Peter Laviolette, who coached Carlson for three seasons in Washington. “They’re doing what they need to do to try and be successful.”

And yet they can’t. As Carlson logs all this ice time — he plays on the power play, he plays on the penalty kill, he’s a key to their best chances at even strength — he also represents the transition period the Capitals are in. This series, even though it could end in Sunday’s Game 4, is valuable experience for the players who will serve as the Caps’ core of the future — Connor McMichael, Hendrix Lapierre, even Ivan Miroshnichenko, who made his playoff debut Friday night.

But the players who drive the fate on the ice and create the standard off it remain Ovechkin, T.J. Oshie, Tom Wilson — and Carlson. If they could will a victory — not even in the series, but in Game 4 — they would.

So each time Carlson’s shoulder is tapped, he goes over the boards. He took 29 shifts Friday. Rangers center Vincent Trocheck matched him in number, but Trocheck’s shifts lasted 52 seconds. Carlson’s averaged a minute and 3 seconds. He played 30 minutes, 30 seconds. No one on either team was within five minutes of him.

“Obviously, you want to manage the minutes as best as you can,” Wilson said. “That being said, it’s like every game we’re playing with five ‘D.’ Guys are dropping like flies. Johnny’s done an amazing job of carrying this team, but it’s tough when you’re playing the whole game.”

Carlson can blow off the idea that there’s a toll to playing so much. But he’s 34. The tread on the tires can’t help but be worn, both this season — in which he played all 82 games and led the team in ice time — and in the playoffs, in which no one on any team is playing more.

“You can tell he’s wearing down, for sure,” Carbery said.

That’s true for Carlson, who’s being asked to do more than his fair share. But it’s also true for the Capitals. There was a way for them to make this series interesting. It involved getting players back in the lineup, not losing more to injury.

But as John Carlson said, “It’s — whatever.” He’ll be there Sunday night, ready to lace them up for 30 minutes of playoff hockey. The season could end. It won’t without maximum effort.