One day after finishing off one of the best months in franchise history, Caps left wing Alex Ovechkin suffered an “upper body strain” in a Nov. 1 game against the Columbus Blue Jackets. And the next day – the same day he was named the NHL’s second star for the month of October – the Capitals announced that Ovechkin will be lost to the team and is “week-to-week.” 

For the first time in Ovechkin’s five-year NHL career, it seems certain that he will miss more than consecutive games.

Three years and a few days ago, Ovechkin first publicly uttered the phrase, “Russian machine never breaks.” The quote came on an off day in Vancouver after Ovechkin blocked a shot off his foot in the waning seconds of the previous game, a 5-3 win over the Avalanche in Colorado on Oct. 25, 2006. Ovechkin not only played in Vancouver, he was involved in all of Washington’s offense with a goal and an assist in a 3-2 loss to the Canucks. He also skated 23:17.

The 24-year-old superstar was off to a tremendous start in 2009-10, leading the league in scoring. The rest of the pack is going to get a chance to gain some ground now.

“I think we’ve got enough character players in there that they will understand what we have to do without Alex,” says Caps coach Bruce Boudreau. “Anytime one player – as great as he is – if he makes the total difference in our team – then we’re in trouble.”

How do you replace Alex Ovechkin? You don’t. It will take a village (so to speak) to even vaguely approximate what he brings to the ice on a nightly basis.

Ovechkin went into Sunday’s game averaging 23 minutes a night, tops among all NHL forwards. He averaged 23:07 per game in 2007-08 and 22:59 a contest last season, leading all NHL forwards by at least half a minute both times. 

Nicklas Backstrom’s ice time has gone from 19 minutes as a rookie to 20 as a sophomore to 21 minutes a night in this, his third season in the league. That steady climb in ice time could go higher still in Ovechkin’s absence. 

Alexander Semin skated 19:14 a night last season and is at 19:51 thus far in 2009-10. He is a good bet to skate more than 20 minutes a night while Ovechkin’s recovers.

The recent return of Tomas Fleischmann to the lineup after he missed the first 11 games of 2009-10 with deep vein thrombosis will also help. Fleischmann scored 19 goals last season and has two goals and three points in his first three games of 2009-10.

Right wing Eric Fehr is a proven scorer at every level, and he delivered a dozen goals last season in limited ice time. Fehr had off-season surgery on both shoulders and then suffered an upper-body injury early in the season. He averaged 11:16 a night last season and has skated just 9:40 a night in 2009-10. 

Fehr is also 24 and it’s about time the Caps enabled him to get the type of ice that Fleischmann has gotten the last few years, and find out once and for all what the strapping Manitoba native can do.

Fleischmann scored 10 goals in 2007-08 while averaging 12:37 a night. He moved to 19 goals last season when his ice was increased to 15:06 a night. Fleischmann has averaged about 16 minutes a might in his three games thus far this season. With similar ice, Fehr could enjoy a similar increase in production.

Increased ice has been a boon for Brooks Laich. His ice has gone up every season since his rookie campaign of 2005-06 and goal total has gone up with it. After scoring seven goals and averaging 11:13 a night as a rookie, the 26-year-old Laich is coming off consecutive 20-goal seasons and is on pace for a 35-goal campaign in 2009-10. He is skating 19:18 a night thus far this season, up a full two minutes over his 17:17 figure from 2008-09.

Wingers Fleischmann and Fehr seem the likeliest choices to pick up significantly more ice in the wake of Ovechkin’s injury. Fehr’s career has been marked by injury, and the Caps have also seemed reluctant at times to endow him with a role in which he could excel, but his time may be upon us.

Down on the farm, Andrew Gordon has seven goals and 13 points in 11 games for the AHL Hershey Bears. Francois Bouchard, a 21-year-old 2006 draftee, has caught fire after a sluggish start. He has five goals and 10 points in his last five games, and has moved into the league’s top 15 in scoring. 

Both Gordon and Bouchard are right wingers, however, so the loss of portsider Ovechkin could also mean another recall for left wing Alexandre Giroux, who on Monday was named AHL Reebok Player of the Month for October despite playing in only seven of Hershey’s 11 October games. Giroux spent a week with Washington last month.

Filling the ice time is one thing. The Caps can spread 23 minutes worth of nightly ice time in power play and even-strength situations among half a dozen or more forwards, but how can they make up for the production lost in Ovechkin’s absence?

“We have to buckle down,” says Boudreau. “A goal a game, he scores. We’ve got to play better defense. We can’t allow four goals and five goals a game. You have to win 3-1 and 2-1 and if you get lucky sometimes, make it a 4-2 game.”

With 23 points (14 goals, nine assists) in 13 October games, Ovechkin had a hand in nearly half of Washington’s first 47 goals this season. He had scored at least a point in 11 of 13 games prior to the injury. He had eight multiple-point and six multiple-point games in 13 October games.

Ovechkin’s 14-goal performance in October matched his single-month personal best. He also scored 14 goals in March, 2008. With 15 goals in February, 1982, only Dennis Maruk has scored more goals in a month for Washington than Ovechkin. The NHL record is 20, held jointly by Joe Malone (20 for Hamilton in Feb. of 1921) and Teemu Selanne (20 for Winnipeg in March of 1993). 

Washington is 1-3 in the previous four games Ovechkin has missed during his NHL career. The Caps were outscored by a combined 15-7 in those games.

That’s a small sample size, and the 2009-10 Caps aren’t a one-man team. Ovechkin was one of half a dozen Caps to record at least 10 points in the team’s first 14 games. The team had nine multiple-goal players through 14 games. If anything, Ovechkin’s sudden absence might help hammer home the point to the Caps that standings points lost by squandering a few late-game October leads can’t happen anymore in November, as it did on Sunday when the Caps lost Ovechkin and the game.

Every player in the league wants more ice time. Starting on Wednesday when Washington visits New Jersey, some of the boys in the red, white and blue sweaters are going to start getting more ice. It will be interesting to see what they do with it.

And for how long they’ll have to do it.