Washington Capitals head coach Peter Laviolette announced during his pregame press conference on Friday that neither Nicklas Backstrom nor Tom Wilson will be in the Caps lineup for their game against the Nashville Predators.
The only returning player will be Nic Dowd. The team’s normal fourth-line center missed Thursday’s game in Columbus due to the birth of his second child.
Backstrom and Wilson both spoke to the media at length after practice on Wednesday and are clearly near making their season debuts.
“They’ve been practicing at full, skating at full, contact for full, everything has been full for them,” Laviolette said. “They’re just in that same mode of continuing to push to get where we want them to be.”
When directly asked by The Athletic’s Tarik El-Bashir if Sunday’s game against the Columbus Blue Jackets was a possibility for both stars, Laviolette replied neither in the negative nor the affirmative.
“We’ll see where things are at,” Laviolette said. “We’ll see where they’re at after tonight. Where everything is for them tomorrow and move from there.”
Dowd comes back into the lineup after leaving it during one of the hottest stretches of his career. He has three goals in his last five games and six goals in his last nine. He has 10 total goals on the season and his career high is 11 which he set during the pandemic shortened 2020-21 season.
Laviolette also stated that goaltender Charlie Lindgren will be back in the Caps’ crease against the Preds. Lindgren last played in the team’s 9-2 stomping of the Montreal Canadiens on New Year’s Eve. He finished the month of December with a league-high 9 wins, a 2.02 goals-against average, and a .929 save percentage.
The Predators come into Friday night’s action also playing the back half of a back-to-back. They beat the Carolina Hurricanes 5-3 in Raleigh on Thursday night. The Preds overall have had a very inconsistent season, currently sitting sixth in the league’s Central Division. They have won five of their last ten games.
Headline photo: Elizabeth Kong/RMNB
