Projecting the Washington Capitals 2021 opening night roster.
Soon, God willing, the Washington Capitals will take the ice to begin the 2021 season. What would the lineup look like as they take those initial line rushes? Which goaltender is leading them onto the ice? How would the forward lines and defensive pairings look?
Sadly it’s going to be a while before we actually know what the lineup looks like as we don’t even know when the season is supposed to begin. Still, we can at least speculate using what the Caps added this offseason as clues for how the lineup should look.
For the purpose of this exercise, we’ll assume the Caps don’t make any more moves as well as stay under the cap. Here’s what we came up with:
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Forwards
Ovechkin-Kuznetsov-Wilson
Vrana-Backstrom-Oshie
Hagelin-Eller-Sprong
Panik-Dowd-Hathaway
Defense
Dillon-Carlson
Orlov-Schultz
Siegenthaler-Jensen
Goalies
Ilya Samsonov
Henrik Lundqvist
You can count on the top six being a lock from last season. Alex Ovechkin will lead the charge coming off his ninth Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy with 48 goals in 68 games. He recently turned 35 so time is running against him but as we’ve seen the last three seasons Ovechkin has defied both age and father time.
We’ve got Ovechkin on the first line being centered by Evgeny Kuznetsov. We’ll likely see him and Nicklas Backstrom rotate as Ovechkin and Backstrom are both inseparable. T.J. Oshie and Tom Wilson could also switch places as well.
Things get interesting though when you talk about the bottom six. Lars Eller will be the one constant but there could be other moving parts. Carl Hagelin will likely be on the third line but the third line will also feature a new face in Daniel Sprong. Sprong amassed 19 goals in 97 games for the Pittsburgh Penguins and Anaheim Ducks. He also impressed coaches in training camp before the bubble as he served as a black ace for the playoffs.
Richard Panik will drop to the fourth line from the third line because he found success on the fourth line at the tail end of the season when he was paired with Nic Dowd and Garnet Hathaway.
The top four pairs on the defense are no doubt either. The top is Brenden Dillon and John Carlson, the second pair will be Dmitry Orlov and Justin Schultz. After that things will get interesting. The Caps had to add more defensemen in the offseason to fill the void of Michal Kempny gone with an injury.
The third pair will likely be Jonas Siegenthaler and a rotation between Nick Jensen and Trevor van Riemsdyk with other players also challenging for that last spot like Paul LaDue and Martin Fehervary.
Finally it’s on to the goaltending where it’ll be Ilya Samsonov‘s time to shine with Henrik Lundqvist getting a good amount of the workload as well with a compressed schedule likely happening.
Those are our projections for the opening night lineup. What are yours? Let us know in the comments.