Capitals’ Anthony Mantha calls healthy scratch a ‘wake-up call’
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Mantha calls healthy scratch a ‘wake-up call’ originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington
ARLINGTON, Va. — With the returns of Nicklas Backstrom and Tom Wilson on Sunday came a series of roster decisions for the Capitals. They had to open two roster spots, clearing salary cap space and reshuffle a lineup that had produced the NHL’s best record over the last month-plus.
One of the biggest domino effects of those moves proved to be a healthy scratch of Anthony Mantha, the Capitals’ prized midseason acquisition of the 2020-21 whose tenure in Washington thus far has been defined by stretches of brilliance between extended scoring droughts. It was the first time he sat out a game for Washington without an injury designation.
“I think I had a good stretch, a bad stretch,” Mantha said at practice Monday. “It’s part of hockey, I don’t think I was playing terrible. Obviously, the minutes were going down, so the decision to play me [9:48] in my last game there so, you kind of knew it was coming.”
Laviolette moved Mantha off the second line and placed him on the fourth-line left wing with Nic Dowd and Garnet Hathaway for Tuesday’s game against the Buffalo Sabres. He played two games in that spot but his 9:48 of ice time Friday against the Nashville Predators was the fewest minutes of any game he finished healthy with the Capitals since he was acquired.
“These are obviously tough decisions,” Laviolette said Sunday. “There’s 14 forwards now with [Aliaksei] Protas and [Joe] Snively not being here and 14 NHL players that have helped our team be successful. Two of those players are now available coming off of injury and it just made for tough decisions. I have no problem if either one of those guys were in the lineup today, Kubel or Mantha, but they’re not. I had to make decisions, and that’s where I started.”
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Mantha has scored nine goals with 14 assists in 42 games for…
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