For the better part of two decades, the Washington Capitals were among the best teams in the NHL and a lot of the success can be chalked up to the duo of Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom. Unfortunately, it seems as though Backstrom won’t have much choice but to call it a career as injuries have forced him to the sideline for the final year of his contract.

Ovechkin on the other hand is still going strong as the Capitals’ captain and pacing to break Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record this season. What is keeping Ovechkin on pace for one of the game’s “unbreakable records” without his main setup guy in Backstrom?

Look no further than 27-year-old Dylan Strome. In the second year of a five-year contract, and third season with the Capitals, Strome is settling in quite nicely next to Ovechkin.

Strome recorded 42 and 40 assists in his first two years with the Capitals, but this year has been a different story. Through 14 games played, Strome has notched 18 helpers, good for fourth in the NHL.

With Strome hitting new strides in playmaking, he’s keeping Ovechkin on the right path to break Gretzky’s record. Ovechkin has 10 goals already and showing that last season’s slow start was just a fluke.

Not only is Ovechkin on a 59-goal pace, but each of his first 10 goals have been assisted by Strome.

That’s the kind of connection Ovechkin and Backstrom used to have before Backstrom was put on the shelf.

The Hockey News’ Sammi Silber notes that Strome and Backstrom have grown close over the last few seasons and occasional bond over being key centers for the sport’s greatest goal scorer.

“The two play golf together, and have had ‘a little bit’ of discussion here and there about being Ovechkin’s center.”

Backstrom spent 17 years with the Capitals and spent most of his time centering Ovechkin. In 1,105 total games played, Backstrom picked up 762 assists, 279 of which have come from Ovechkin goals.

As the injuries piled up for Backstrom, not only were the Capitals concerned about winning or losing hockey games, but it wasn’t certain Ovechkin would be able to continue trending toward the record. With Strome finding Ovechkin every chance he gets, not only is the goals record in sight, but the Capitals are still a winning team.

The Capitals hold a 10-4-0 record and are third in the Metropolitan Division. They snuck their way into the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season, but are looking to be real contenders this time around.

It might not be easy to replace Backstrom’s outstanding work next to Ovechkin, but Strome is certainly stepping up quite nicely.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is making a victor’s return to Washington.

President Joe Biden will welcome him to the White House on Wednesday for an Oval Office visit that is a traditional part of the peaceful handoff of power — a ritual that Trump himself declined to participate in four years ago.

Trump also planned to meet with Republicans from Congress as they focus on his Day 1 priorities and prepare for a potentially unified government with a GOP sweep of power in the nation’s capital. His arrival amid Republican congressional leadership elections could put his imprint on the outcome.

It’s a stunning return to the U.S. seat of government for the former president, who departed nearly four years ago a diminished, politically defeated leader after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol but is preparing to come back to power with what he and his GOP allies see as a mandate for governance.

Ahead of the visit, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that Republicans are “ready to deliver” on Trump’s “America First” agenda.

After his election win in 2016, Trump met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office and called it “a great honor.” But he soon was back to heaping insults on Obama, including accusing his predecessor — without evidence — of having wire-tapped him during the 2016 campaign.

Four years later, Trump disputed his 2020 election loss to Biden, and he has continued to lie about widespread voter fraud that did not occur. He didn’t invite Biden, then the president-elect, to the White House and he left Washington without attending Biden’s inauguration. It was the first time that had happened since Andrew Johnson skipped Ulysses S. Grant’s swearing-in 155 years ago.

Biden insists that he’ll do everything he can to make the transition to the next Trump administration go smoothly. That’s despite having spent more than a year campaigning for reelection and decrying Trump as a threat to democracy and the nation’s core values. Biden then bowed out of the race in July and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him.

In the wake of the election, the president has abandoned his dire warnings about Trump, saying in a speech last week, “The American experiment endures. We’re going to be okay.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden is committed to “making sure that this transition is effective, efficient and he’s doing that because it is the norm, yes, but also the right thing to do for the American people.”

“We want this to go well,” Jean-Pierre added. “We want this to be a process that gets the job done.”

Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan echoed that sentiment, saying the administration will uphold the “responsible handoff from one president to the next, which is in the best tradition of our country.”

Wednesday’s visit is more than just a courtesy call.

“They will go through the top issues — both domestic and foreign policy issues — including what is happening in Europe and Asia and the Middle East,” Sullivan told CBS of Wednesday’s meeting. “And the president will have the chance to explain to President Trump how he sees things … and talk to President Trump about how President Trump is thinking about taking on these issues when he takes office.”

Traditionally, as the outgoing and incoming presidents meet in the West Wing, the first lady hosts her successor upstairs in the residence — but Melania Trump isn’t expected to attend.

After his 2016 meeting with Obama, Trump also visited lawmakers on Capitol Hill and will be doing the same Wednesday — not far from where a mob of his supporters staged a violent January 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol to try and stop the certification of Biden’s election victory.

When Trump left Washington in 2021, even some top Republicans had begun to decry him for his role in helping incite the Capitol attack. But his win in last week’s election completes a political comeback that has seen Trump once again become the unchallenged head of the GOP.

It’s not the first time Trump has returned to the Capitol area since the end of his first term, though. Congressional Republicans hosted Trump over the summer, as Trump was again solidifying his dominance over the party.

His latest visit comes as Republicans, who wrested the Senate majority from Democrats in last week’s elections and are on the cusp of keeping GOP control of the House, are in the midst of their own leadership elections happening behind closed doors Wednesday.

The president-elect’s arrival will provide another boost to Johnson, who has pulled ever-closer to Trump as he worked to keep his majority — and his own job with the gavel.

The speaker said he expects to see Trump repeatedly throughout the week, including at an event later that evening, and at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida “all weekend.”

It’s unclear whether Trump will also visit the Senate, which is entangled in a more divisive closed-door leadership election in the three-way race to replace outgoing GOP Leader Mitch McConnell.

Trump’s allies are pushing GOP senators to vote for Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who had been a longshot candidate challenging two more senior Republicans, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, for the job.

___

Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

There is plenty of young talent within this Washington Nationals organization that should give hope for how things will look in the upcoming years.

After trading away Juan Soto in a difficult decision at the 2022 trade deadline, it looks like that deal was a home run for them with almost all of their returning pieces looking like they could become franchise cornerstones.

Beyond that, there are others in the pipeline who seem to have bright futures as well, and based on how general manager Mike Rizzo has operated recently, they will get a chance to prove they can be part of this team going forward during the upcoming 2025 season.

However, two of the Nationals past first-round picks are no longer with the team.

According to Mark Zuckerman of MASN, Carter Kieboom and Mason Denaburg have elected to become free agents, ending their tenure within Washington’s organization.

Kieboom was taken 28th overall in the 2016 draft, and early on in his career, he was thought to be their third baseman of the future.

But things didn’t quite work out that way.

He could never get things going at the plate, slashing .199/.297/.301 with 12 homers, 42 RBI and an OPS+ of 65 across his 133 Major League games from 2019-23. The Tommy John surgery he underwent that caused him to miss the entire 2022 campaign didn’t help him either.

At 27 years old, Kieboom will look for his next opportunity elsewhere, hoping he can resurrect his career and live up to the first-round projection he had almost a decade ago.

As for Denaburg, he never came close to reaching the MLB.

Despite being taken 27th overall in 2018, the right-handed pitcher hasn’t even made it to Double-A at any point of his career, having been snake bitten by injuries and poor play throughout.

While the Nationals are certainly brimming with young talent at this stage of their rebuild, the departures of Kieboom and Denaburg this offseason are reminders of how poor they have been at drafting players in the first round over the years.

Hopefully that will come to an end as the front office looks to supplement their pipeline while their star prospects get called up to The Show.