“I thought he looked good, but he is still day-to-day,” Capitals Coach Peter Laviolette said. “… It was good to see him out there. He was moving well out there.”

Ovechkin, 37, has only missed 48 games in his 18-year career. The last time he missed two games in a row was this past April, when he missed the final three games of the regular season after suffering a shoulder injury.

While Ovechkin returned to the ice, forward T.J. Oshie returned to Washington for the birth of his fourth child. Oshie, who has recorded 10 goals and seven assists in 32 games this season, will miss Tuesday’s game.

If Ovechkin does not play Tuesday, it would appear that forward Aliaksei Protas would slot into the lineup. Protas was called up from the team’s American Hockey League in Hershey, Pa., before the Capitals’ three-game road trip. He performed well for Washington to start the season, but the returns of Nicklas Backstrom and Tom Wilson forced him out of the lineup, and he was sent to Hershey.

Washington is 1-1-0 through its first two games of its road trip. It is coming off a 6-2 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday.

Laviolette said the team talked about its mental slip-up against the Golden Knights and reviewed film before hitting the ice Monday.

“I think we’ve been playing some pretty good hockey as of late,” Laviolette said. “Everything that we did in that game wasn’t of the same direction we were moving in before that game. I thought that we were pretty good offensively, pretty good defensively. I liked things that we were doing. It just didn’t happen for us last game.”