Happy Friday! The Caps are up in Buffa-love to play the Sabres and just in case you get that feeling that we might have just played them….we did on Monday.
The Capitals are having some trouble not only on the power play but also holding a lead and preventing the game from entering into overtime. Hopefully, the boys have ironed out some weird wrinkles and can come back to win a game in regulation, since the last regulation win was on November 25th against…yes…the Buffalo Sabres.
Tonight, the Caps will face a new problem going into the game. The issue is going to be the fact that even though Buffalo has had a rough time staying healthy, their players are slowly coming back. The Sabres will bring two of their top six defensemen, Dmitry Kulikov and Josh Gorges, back into the lineup tonight. It’s also looking like the Sabres will bring back forward Nic Deslauriers tonight after he was out for 19 games. A healthy Sabres squad could present quite a challenge for the boys in red, especially since Matt Niskanen is out with an upper body injury and didn’t even travel to Buffalo with the team.
So, despite the fact that we began and will end the work week with a Sabres matchup, this game is shaping up to be pretty different from what we saw on Monday.
Game is at 7:00 pm game tonight and we’re back on CSN, thank the Lord.
| Team | Record | SA% | PDO | Power Play | Penalty Kill |
| Buffalo Sabres | 10-10-6 | 48.5% | 99.2 | 23.0% | 75.6% |
| Washington Capitals | 15-7-3 | 53.0% | 100.7 | 14.8% | 82.5% |
Projected Lines
All thanks to Isabelle, the lines are here:
Johansson – Backstrom – Oshie
Ovechkin – Kuznetsov – Williams
Burakovsky – Eller – Vrana
Winnik – Beagle – Wilson
Alzner – Carlson
Orpik – Orlov
Schmidt – Chorney
Grubauer
Level Up!
Storylines
- What in the world do we do about the damn power play? Spenser has a simple solution.
- Carey Price could NOT STOP PUNCHING Kyle Palmieri during the Habs-Devils game last night.
- Matt Niskanen will not be playing tonight in Buffa-love.
- All Alex Ovechkin wanted to be was a pizza delivery boy. Spoiler alert: he was much better at something else.
- Did you take a glance at the morning after numbers from last game? Take another look.
- The Caps problems are not at 5-on-5 but instead somewhere else..
- Nate Schmidt continues to be the giggling ray of sunshine in all our lives.
- The NHL owes Alex Ovechkin an assist from last game.
- Ted Leonsis continues to be supportive of Ovechkin’s 2018 Olympics stance.
TIME Person of the Year
By now most of you have heard who the TIME ‘Person of the Year’ is and if you have been living under a rock and really don’t know…..well….you can probably guess (hint: it’s Donald Trump).
Donald Trump is TIME’s Person of the Year 2016 #TIMEPOY https://t.co/5pTGOksevE pic.twitter.com/N8BtqTu9Nl
— TIME (@TIME) December 7, 2016
Over the past two days, I have loved hearing about who everyone else thinks should have been the ‘Person of the Year’. So, my pregame question is…if we could go back in time (heh) and pick another individual as ‘Person of the Year’ for 2016 who would you choose? I vote either Kirk Cousins or my coworker that refills the coffee drawer every morning.
Headline photo: Patrick McDermott
