With Alex Ovechkin out with an upper-body injury and Hershey call-up Dmitry Orlov an apparent scratch, the Washington Capitals won’t have a Russian player in their lineup since [gulp] April 4, 2004. Yeah. The pre-Ovechkin, fire-sale era. (Alex Semin was on the roster, but did not play.)

Look at this lineup. It is terrible. Half of these players, I have no idea even who the hell they even are. This was the final game the Caps played before the lockout. Washington lost the game 4-3 to the Penguins, who were also terrible back then.

Seriously, who is Roman Tvrdon? I literally do not remember that guy at all.

The Capitals of November 2013 are nothing like the 2004 team. One was was bottom-five in both offense and defense; the other is one point out of the playoffs. There will be lots of opportunities for scoring tonight — particularly from a pretty boss top line (Erat-Backstrom-Fehr). So let’s all try to think of tonight’s Russian-less lineup not so much as a death knell for our site’s brand effectiveness, but rather as an opportunity for some non-Ruskie players to step up and crash the net.

Closing note: I am not Elias. While I manually pored over gamelogs from 2008 to 2012, there’s a chance I missed something. Feel free to check my work.

Thanks to Chase for the idea.