Photo: Amanda Bowen
Off since Sunday, the Caps get back to business tonight against the Canucks. Despite having a general manager who seems to be actively trying to make his team worse, the Canucks are in the hunt for a playoff spot. Led by the Sedin twins, Vancouver is 6-2-2 in their last 10 games.
For the Caps, noted goon Marcus Johansson returns to the lineup after serving a two-game suspension for being a dirty, dirty player.
The Canucks have picked up 10 of their points via the overtime loser point and have a minus-15 goal differential. This isn’t a very good team. If the Caps are on their game and the randomness of sixty minutes of hockey doesn’t sabotage them, another two points will be in the bank.
7 PM game time on CSN. Peter’s got your recap.
| Team | Record | Possession | PDO | Power Play | Penalty Kill |
| Washington Capitals | 32-7-3 | 51.7% | 102.1 | 26.6% | 85.4% |
| Vancouver Canucks | 17-16-10 | 47.2% | 99.9 | 17.4% | 79.6% |
Projected Lineup
Katie Brown said the lines looked like this at the morning skate:
Ovechkin – Backstrom – Oshie
Burakovsky – Kuznetsov – Williams
Chimera – Johansson – Wilson
Laich – Sill – Galiev
Alzner – Niskanen
Orlov – Schmidt
Ness – Chorney
Holtby
A Thing on the Internet Today
Lemmy, Bowie, Rickman. For some reason, all of a sudden, I’m worried about Iggy Pop, Paul Westerberg, and Ray Wise.
Storylines
- The Caps are going to honor 500-goal scorer Alex Ovechkin before the game tonight. Tom Green might also be in attendance to Unleash the Fury in person.
- Justin Peters wants out.
- Brooks Laich shed some light on how generous the captain is.
- So far, Dmitry Orlov and Nate Schmidt have shown they can handle top-4 minutes.
- Scott Gomez is joining the Hershey Bears on a tryout basis.
- Having built such a big lead in the Metro, how will the Caps stay motivated.
- Amanda went to Hockey ‘N Heels and got some great pictures.
- The Washington Capitals are crossword enthusiasts.
- The folks over at Japers’ Rink had a roundtable discussion about the first half of the season: Part 1. Part 2.
- Barry Trotz has been pleasantly surprised by Zach Sill.
- Arik Parnass has launched a site devoted to the digging deeper into special teams play.
- Happy birthdays to Alan May and Jon Press!
Ovi Love
There’s been a lot of rightful love for Ovechkin this week as he scored his 500th goal. The good people at the Hockey PDOcast, which include RMNB contributor Dimitri Filipovic, spent some time talking about The Great Eight on their most recent episode. Great stuff as always from the PDOcast. Check it out.
Merch Plug
don't wanna brag but @ovi8 did score his 500th goal right after i got my @russianmachine mug . pic.twitter.com/1IzGBXTHRL
— steve patrick (@thestevepatrick) January 14, 2016
Steve of Young Rising Sons enjoys RMNB mugs. You can too, using the RMNB store.
