ARLINGTON, Va. — Spencer Carbery wasn’t mincing words.
His team is up 1-0 on the Montreal Canadiens in their Stanley Cup playoff series and officially down one important player. Martin Fehérváry, a reliable member of one of the league’s best group of defensemen, is done for the season after having knee surgery on Monday. He was injured in the 81st game of the regular season.
“It sucks,” Carbery said. “It’s the worst part of this game, when guys get hurt like this and aren’t able to be out there in the most important time of year.”
Fehérváry typically played second-pair minutes for Washington this season alongside Matt Roy, but Carbery and his staff weren’t dogmatic about their pairings, either. They used their top six defensemen — John Carlson, Jakob Chychrun, Roy, Fehérváry, Rasmus Sandin and Trevor van Riemsdyk — in nine different combinations for 153 minutes of ice time or more.
That’s a feature, not a bug, Carbery said. Now, it’s time to lean on that interchangeability.
“That gives you an opportunity as a player to play with a bunch of different guys, create some chemistry, communication, tendencies, different things that you learn about one another,” he said. “So I think, I think our guys have a pretty good grasp — forwards and D for that matter — of being able to be interchangeable.”
Replacing Fehérváry in the lineup, once again, will be Alexander Alexeyev. Coincidentally, he has an injury issue of his own after taking an inadvertent high stick to the face from Canadiens forward Jake Evans in the third period. After the game, a 3-2 Capitals OT win, Carbery said Alexeyev would need “significant dental work.” On Tuesday, he made a point to mention Alexeyev’s “late, late night.”
Alexeyev went to the locker room after getting hit up high by Evans’ stick on the follow through#ALLCAPS | #GoHabsGo pic.twitter.com/sa9d4TNy9r
— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) April 22, 2025
Despite only dressing for nine regular-season games, Alexeyev performed well on Monday night. In the 12:19 he spent on the ice with van Riemsdyk, the Capitals out-attempted the Canadiens 16-9, outshot them 9-4, outscored them 1-0 and controlled nearly 85 percent of the expected goals. Expecting more than that out of a third pair would be unreasonable.
Roy and Sandin won their minutes, too. The former figures to continue to pick up slack in Fehérváry’s absence.
“I think the transitions should be pretty seamless,” Roy said, “and it’s just a matter of competing and executing.”
The top pair of Carlson-Chychrun, though, had some issues in Game 1; Washington was out-attempted 21-12 with them on the ice and controlled just 36 percent of the expected goals. That came to a head with 4:15 remaining in regulation, when both Carlson and Chychrun struggled to deal with the Canadiens’ forecheck, failed to clear the zone and helped create the chance that led to Nick Suzuki’s tying goal.
Of the sequence, Carbery said postgame that you could “see it coming” and said there was some “mismanagement” in the run-up. His team responded in overtime, though, and staked itself an early series lead. All’s well that ends well — or, as center Nic Dowd put it on Tuesday, “It’s not like we were going to go into this series and not give a goal up.”‘
And while Carbery’s disappointment for Fehérváry was clear from the jump, his confidence in the rest of the group was, too.
“This is where the character of your group has to come through. And it has to start with from the coaching staff,” he said. “Marty’s a great player. He’s a big part of our team. But we absolutely can still win — no disrespect to Marty. We can absolutely play well and still win hockey games without him.”
• Carbery’s satisfaction with the Caps’ fast start on Monday night carried over to Tuesday morning. Washington shuffled a bit to end the regular season after clinching the top seed in the Eastern Conference but showed no signs of that during a physical, effective first 20 minutes.
“As we were going down the stretch, you were like, ‘OK. At a certain point, let’s get ready, let’s get ready, let’s get ready,’” Carbery said. “There’s a lot of trust been built up with our group, with our leadership group, that when the puck drops in the meaningful games, we’ll be ready to play. And I have a ton of respect for the way our guys came out and played last night.
“Now, did it drop off in the third period? It definitely did. But the start and the way that we came out and got right to our game physically involved, the urgency level, the details inside of our game were exactly where what we were playing at our best this year.”
• For a third straight day, Aliaksei Protas skated by himself ahead of the team practice. Protas, a 30-goal scorer and one of the biggest breakout players of the regular season, hasn’t played since a skate cut his foot on April 4.
Carbery said on Monday that he “absolutely” expects Protas to play during the series, and Tuesday’s work continued to suggest that’ll be the case.
(Photo of Alexander Alexeyev: Patrick Smith / Getty Images)