Alex Ovechkin stayed on for the entirety of practice on Thursday, and Sammi Silber read it as a good sign for the Capitals star.
That's the whole update. He finished the session, and the beat writer in the building called it progress.
Nobody has said what the injury is. Nobody has put a date on a return either.
For a player at his stage, a full practice is the news. Everything else follows from there.
Washington opens the regular season on October 2 at Carolina. That's the deadline sitting over all of it.
The Capitals are 1-0-1 through the exhibition schedule after beating Philadelphia 5-2 on Monday.
Boston visits on Friday, which gives Spencer Carbery one more look before this roster gets locked down.
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Alex Ovechkin delivers promising sign in latest Capitals injury update
Carbery runs that bench with Chris Patrick handling the front office side.
Washington has already begun trimming, making the first nine cuts of camp earlier this week.
A healthy Ovechkin changes what that lineup looks like. An unhealthy one changes it a great deal more.
Nobody in that organization is going to rush any of this. There's no version where they gain something by hurrying.
Clubs say not too serious in September and mean anything from a week to a month.
Silber didn't use the word cleared. She said coming along. Those are two different sentences.
Friday against Boston is the last real look before anything counts.
Eight days is enough time for this to resolve quietly or turn into a story.
Carolina waits at the other end of it, and that building has never been a gentle place to open a year.
Every Washington season now runs through one man's availability. That's been true for a long while.
So how much does one practice actually settle? Watching a star finish a full session works like hearing a car turn over on a cold morning. It doesn't guarantee the trip.
He got through it. In the last week of September, that on its own is enough to move an entire market.
Will Alex Ovechkin be in the lineup for Washington's opener in Carolina?
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