Nylander Injured

And the curse of the Capitals 2007-08 season continues.

Nylander is out with my very favorite type of injury, the undisclosed kind - no word on the severity or the type or the length of time he'll be out for, but he definitely won't be in the lineup for the Caps' first visit to Prudential Center tomorrow night.

So now the question becomes, as it always does, who steps up? In the past the answer eternally seemed to be: nobody.

But this is supposedly a new season, with a new bench boss in charge, and he doesn't seem like the type of guy to let this team get away with anything. Hopefully one more injury won't derail this team from what has been greatly improved play.

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Swedes Take DC by Storm

Need a little happy? Check out this report on Nylander and Backstrom in the DC Sports Bog (a rare Caps sighting for the venerable Post blog deserves recognition, don't you agree?).

My favorite part:

Backstrom comes over to the Nylanders two or three times a week; he went to Nylander's son's hockey game last weekend. "I'm not the babysitter; I'm his seventh kid," Backstrom said.

Good stuff. Almost makes you forget they're playing a game in less than three hours...

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The Swedish Mentor

This is fantastic. Read on: Professor Nylander's School of Hockey

It's fascinating - right after Nylander was signed everyone was asking whether he was brought in specifically to mentor Backstrom. We all assumed it was true but McPhee said no. Nylander said no. It was just a case of right time, right place, right numbers...right?

Cut to months later and two weeks into the season Nylander's already taken the young Swede under his wing, teaching him on and off the ice as the two continue to develop great chemistry. That's a hell of a coincidence, but a great one.

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Slow Start for Swedes?

- Eric Duhatschek at the Globe and Mail has a piece out today about free agents and their slow adjustment to their new teams - mind you, we're three or four games in for most teams, so slow is probably relative, but I digress.

I don't want to be too sensitive about this - Duhatschek makes some good points about needing to find the right balance and how it takes a while for coaches to find out what works and what doesn't. And most of the teams he mentioned can't really be questioned - how well is Gomez doing with the Rangers? Zubrus with the Devils?

But what's interesting is that he includes among the slow starters our very own Michael Nylander. His reasoning is that Nylander was supposed to play with Ovechkin. That's why he was brought in, of course, right? Instead Kozlov (incidentally another free agent signing, which seems to be conveniently forgotten) is playing with the young superstar while Nylander is "trying to find a niche with fellow Swede Nicklas Backstrom."

That's one way to put it, I guess. Nylander has a goal and an assist through three games, Backstrom has two assists. Yes, they look like they're still adjusting.

It's just a little strange to base the failure or success of a player's start on a new team with who you thought they would play with. We all assumed that Nylander would be up with Ovie, but then anyone who watched training camp at all saw that Nylander and Semin had amazing chemistry, while Ovechkin and Kozlov have a history of playing together and seem to get better every night.

I guess we just have a different view of what constitutes a "slow start".

- Speaking of Kozlov, he's loving life right now. But we knew that already.

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