Ovechkin 'Week to Week' With Upper Body Strain

After leaving Sunday's overtime loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets with an upper body injury, the Washington Capitals announced on Monday that Alex Ovechkin will be out of the lineup on a week-to-week basis with an upper body strain.

It goes without saying that it's a huge blow to the Capitals offense, as he's leading the league in goals (again) and points. Prior to this injury, he missed only four games in his NHL career, three of them coming a year ago.

Capitals head coach Bruce Boudreau on the news:

"We have to buckle down. A goal a game he scores, so we got to play better defense and cannot allow four or 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. I think we have enough character players who understand what we will have to do without Alex."

Before going down on Sunday, he was off to, perhaps, the best start of his career, scoring 14 goals in 14 games and helping lead the Capitals to an 8-2-4 start out of the gate. He also sparked debate as to whether or not he could be a threat to score 50 goals in 50 games -- or make a push for the 70-goal mark.

Washington's schedule over the next week includes a road game at New Jersey and a pair of games with the Florida Panthers.

It's been a rough opening month for some of the NHL's elite players, as Ovechkin joins Evgeni Malkin, Marc Savard, Ilya Kovalchuk, Roberto Luongo, Sergei Gonchar, Johan Franzen, and Jonathan Toews, just to name a few, who have all missed significant action with various injuries.