Although coach Todd Reirden has always been a fan of intrasquad competitions, he decided to ramp up the intensity at the start of last season. He began integrating more of the games into the Caps’ practice schedule. He also asked video analyst Tim Ohashi to begin tracking wins and losses for individual players.
“I wanted to see who wins those things,” Reirden said with a smile.
In practice, top-six forwards wear red jerseys, bottom-six forwards wear white jerseys and defensemen wear blue. That gives Alex Ovechkin and Co. a massive advantage, obviously. So to mitigate that edge, the coaches often attempt to even things up by having players change sides. For example, John Carlson could be added to Team White for a particular game. It’s an unofficial salary cap, of sorts, and it was implemented last season after players complained about Team Red being stacked, Reirden said.
“I think it was one of the goalies who said, ‘Hey, what about a salary cap? It’s not even close,'” Reirden remembered hearing after a particularly lopsided affair. “So, just to make it more even, we agreed.”
Ohashi added: “We’re not calculating it with hard numbers. We just try to keep it balanced for their benefit and for mine, so I don’t hear about it too much. But it doesn’t work all the time.”
