Photo: Susan Walsh/AP
WAKE UP, WE’RE BACK!
So, there’s, like, a hockey game tonight in Montreal between two teams who are near the top of the standings in the best league on the planet Earth. One team will wear a dark sweater, the other a light sweater. They’ll skate up and down the ice trying to put the black disc thing into the net thing. Whoever does this more often over at least 60 minutes of hockeying with be considered the better hockeyers for that night and be rewarded with two points in the standings.
Some players will do things well and people will be pleased. Some players will do things badly and people will be outraged in a disproportionate manner, probably in 140 characters or less.
| Team | Record | Possession | PDO | Power Play | Penalty Kill |
| Washington Capitals | 17-5-1 | 53.5% | 101.0 | 26.8% | 83.3% |
| Montreal Canadiens | 19-4-3 | 53.3% | 102.1 | 23.9% | 86.4% |
Projected Lineup
Per Isabelle, no changes.
Ovechkin – Backstrom – Oshie
Johansson – Kuznetsov – Williams
Chimera – Beagle – Burakovsky
Laich – Latta – Wilson
Schmidt – Carlson
Alzner – Niskanen
Orlov – Chorney
Holtby
Best GIF of the Day
Storylines
- Michael Latta and Tom Wilson “fought” at “practice” on “Wednesday.”
- Our friends at the Hockey PDOcast talked about the offside rule, which is something we talked about earlier this week.
- The Caps are the odds-on favorites to win the Stanley Cup. Oil painting.
- RMNB report card time for the first 20 games(ish) of the season.
- Russians meet friends in Canada, a two-part photoessay. (NSFW: Oates.)
- Alex Ovechkin: Breaker of pucks.
- Andrew Gordon issued a state of the union of sorts, except about hockey instead of the union.
- An RMNB reader will be on Jeopardy tonight, wearing our t-shirt.
- Jagr recuses himself from the ASG. Click through for Teemu’s reply.
Fans-I appreciate your votes for All-Star game, but 3 on 3 would kill me,and i don't want to die yet:)Thank you for understanding. Too old:)
— Jaromir Jagr (@68Jagr) December 2, 2015
Pavel Has Spoken
"I believe, at this point, @ovi8 is the best pure goal scorer in the game." – Pavel Bure https://t.co/ynvT8xGQMC pic.twitter.com/mcjFl3ekty
— NHL (@NHL) December 3, 2015
We’re having an ongoing debate on the RMNB Slack about what exactly “pure goal scorer” means. Peter asks you to share your thoughts using this form.
