With the World Cup of Hockey set to begin in a few weeks and the start of the NHL’s regular season not far behind that, John Carlson has a lot on his mind these days.

Something the Capitals defenseman no longer thinks about, though, is the broken ankle that required surgery in late February.

“I hurt it, took some time off, tried to come back, it felt good, and then it kind of deteriorated,” Carlson said recently.

“At that time,” he continued, “we just felt the only option was to get surgery and put some screws in it to basically bulletproof it, make sure that I was back in time for the playoffs and that we were not ever going to have an issue with it again.”

After missing a total of 25 regular season games, Carlson returned to form in the playoffs, racking up five goals and 12 points while averaging 26:54 of ice time against the Flyers and Penguins.

The ankle hasn’t bothered him since, the 26-year-old said, and he doesn’t anticipate that he'll need to have the screws removed.

“Only if it’s really, really bugging me, and it’s not,” Carlson said of the hardware used to repair the fracture. “It’s perfect, has been the whole summer. It’s good.”

These days, Carlson is skating and working out daily at Kettler Capitals Iceplex as he ramps up for the World Cup in Toronto, where he’ll represent Team USA and join eight fellow Capitals who are also participating in the eight-team tournament. The teams will convene for practice on Sept. 5 and the preliminary games begin Sept. 17 at Air Canada Centre.