Caps vs Red Wings Pregame: Schmidt Down, Oleksy Up!

January 10, 2015 12:49 pm

Rolling with the homies.

The Washington Capitals didn’t seem like themselves during Thursday’s overtime loss to the Philadephia Flyers. If they don’t get their act together for Saturday night’s home game against the Detroit Red Wings, who are a far better team than the Flyers, this one’ll get ugly quick.

Puck drops a little after 7 PM on CSN, though I have a feeling 18 thousand or so of you will be watching it in person at Verizon Center.

Team	Record	Possession	PDO	Power Play	Penalty Kill
Washington Capitals	21-11-8	51.0%	100.7	23.3%	79.1%
Detroit Red Wings	22-10-9	53.8%	99.9	24.5%	86.8%

Projected Lineup

No change in lines, which is ridiculous, but whatevs. Your boy Alex Prewitt with the report:

Ovechkin – Backstrom – Burakovsky
Johansson – Kuznetsov – Brouwer
Laich– Fehr – Ward
Chimera – Beagle – Wilson

Orpik – Carlson
Alzner – Niskanen
Hillen – Green

Holtby

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Storylines

The Schmidtuation update: The Caps have sent Nate Schmidt down to Hershey and called up Steve Oleksy. I totally called this October by the way. Oleksy will almost certainly be a scratch tonight. Schmidt will be back next week.

Trotz said Nate Schmidt will play two in Hershey, rejoin the Caps after the game Sunday. Wanted him to get some action.

— Alex Prewitt (@alex_prewitt) January 10, 2015

Detroit has the second best PP in the league and the fourth best PK. They’re monsters everywhere. The Caps ought not trust in the bounces tonight, or else they’ll get walloped.
Rookie Pheonix Copley will back up Braden Holtby tonight.

Caps rookie call up Pheonix Copley chats with Mitch Korn after first NHL morning skate. #CapitalsTalk pic.twitter.com/T1K5Jxw7PM

— Chuck Gormley (@CharlesAGormley) January 10, 2015