The Washington Capitals will be back on the ice inside Capital One Arena for the first time in four days as the Philadelphia Flyers are in town for a Metropolitan Division matchup.
TJ Oshie will reclaim his spot within the team’s top six forward group after missing the past eleven games due to a lower-body injury suffered in late October.
Oshie’s addition to the lineup is made possible by the return of Connor McMichael to the AHL. The Caps sent their young prospect down to the Hershey Bears last Sunday, opening up a spot on the NHL 23-man roster.
The team’s lines, featuring Oshie, were reported by The Athletic’s Tarik El-Bashir.
#Caps morning skate lines and pairs ahead of PHI:
Ovechkin-Strome-Sheary
Milano-Kuznetsov-Oshie
Johansson-Eller-Mantha
Protas-Dowd-HathawayGustafsson-Carlson
Fehervary-Jensen
Irwin-TvR— Tarik El-Bashir (@Tarik_ElBashir) November 23, 2022
Oshie will skate on the Capitals’ second line with Sonny Milano and Evgeny Kuznetsov while Dylan Strome will center the top line between Alex Ovechkin and Conor Sheary to complete the top six.
The 35-year-old veteran Oshie has played in just nine games this season, recording five points (2g, 3a). He is coming off an injury-prone 2021-22 season where he missed 38 games due to a lower-body injury (broken foot), an upper-body injury (back), COVID, and a non-COVID illness. He also had surgery on his core over the offseason.
Exiting the forward group as a projected healthy scratch will be waiver-wire pickup Nicolas Aube-Kubel. NAK has gotten into four games with the Caps since arriving from the Toronto Maple Leafs as a much-needed depth option. He’ll be joined out of the lineup by defenseman Dmitry Orlov, who skated Wednesday morning but did not take line rushes which signals the likely eighth-straight missed game for the Russian blueliner.
Darcy Kuemper, according to the Washington Post’s Samantha Pell, will start his second straight game after being defeated by his former teammates from Colorado 4-0 last Saturday. After a very strong October, Kuemper has struggled in November to the tune of a 1-6 record, a 3.39 goals-against average, and a .888 save percentage.
The Caps will look to snap a four-game losing streak against the Flyers who have lost seven games in a row in their own right. Philly currently sits one point above Washington in the Metro standings with one fewer game played.
Headline photo: Alan Dobbins/RMNB
