The Washington Capitals stay out west as they look to split their season series with the Arizona Coyotes in Glendale at good ole Gila River Arena. The Caps are riding a two game losing streak heading into Thursday night’s action and they have yet to lose three games in a row this season.
Puck drop is at 9 PM, which I think is even worse than a 10 PM start because at least with the latter you know you’re fully committing to a later work week night. Get your TVs and/or streaming devices tuned to NBCSWA to catch this bad boy live. Julia has graciously taken the recap for me tonight because my mouth is killing me from the dentist.
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|---|---|---|
| Record | 13-11-2 | 15-9-3 |
| Shot Attempt % | 50.2% | 47.8% |
| PDO | 98.7 | 102.3 |
| Power Play | 15.9% | 26.4% |
| Penalty Kill | 90.0% | 76.2% |
Projected Lines
Pheonix Copley gets the nod in the cage, Tom Wilson is out injured, and Jonas Siegenthaler checks in for Madison Bowey. Here’s how that all shakes out via Isabelle with WaPo:
Ovechkin – Backstrom – Burakovsky
Vrana – Kuznetsov – Connolly
Stephenson – Eller – DSP
Jaskin – Dowd – Boyd
Kempny – Carlson
Orlov – Niskanen
Siegenthaler – Djoos
Copley
Jonathan Drouin Accidentally Speaks the Truth?
Why is no one talking about this slip up from Drouin about the Ottawa Senators? 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/MQAnypM7n9
— Leah Kessel (@leahflame) December 6, 2018
Storylines
- Ryan Reaves was spared by the NHL’s Department of Player Safety for his blindside hit on Tom Wilson during Tuesday night’s game. Reaves went even further to then claim that Wilson just “ran into a lion in the jungle” even though lions do not live in jungles and Reaves clearly launches up to hit Wilson. There was no “running into”.
- Peter and Ian discuss this problem of lions not living in jungles on the most recent edition of the RMNB Podcast. Listen up, folks.
- Reaves is now (was attempting to?) also profiting off of Wilson’s injury and the illegal hit by selling autographed pictures featuring Wilson down on the ice. Scumbag city.
- Meanwhile, the rest of the Caps are confused about what the NHL’s DoPS even bases things off of anymore. Considering George Parros pulled that formula out of mid air to justify suspending Wilson for 20 games, I don’t really blame them.
- With all of that being said, Tom Wilson will be missing the game against the Coyotes due to an “upper-boddy” injury.
- Pat is back with another guest post to let you know that Nic Dowd should continue to stay in the lineup over Travis Boyd.
- Some semi-good news on the Caps injury front is that TJ Oshie is skating again at the Caps practice facility as he tries to make his way back from a concussion.
- The Sergei Shumakov experiment in Hershey seems to be completely over.
Chris’ Favorite Video Game of the Year
The 2018 Game Awards are tonight and in honor of that lets discuss video games in 2018. Last year, believe it or not I picked Fortnite in this category when it was barely a fledgling battle royale game. I now hate Fortnite. Moving on, of course the big three names out there right now for “game of the year” are probably God of War by SIE Santa Monica Studio, Marvel’s Spider-Man by Insomniac Games, and Red Dead Redemption 2 by Rockstar Games. I’m going to deviate from those three with my choice and pick a game up for the “Best Direction” award in Detroit: Become Human by Quantic Dream.
Detroit is a PS4 exclusive that was released in very early summer 2018. The plot revolves around three separate androids and the player has to navigate all three through thousands upon thousands of dialog and action choices. I’m a huge fan of adventure games that involve human choice, but also make those choices have direct consequences in later gameplay. This is a game that is very easy to play till its completion as the story is engaging and ever evolving, plus you jump around from character to character so things never really get stale. I highly suggest a playthrough if you’re a fan of the choice-based adventure genre.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Coyotes
Headline photo: Mark J. Rebilas
