Capitals Lines Tonight: Expected Starters and Goalkeeper

We are moments away from the Washington Capitals taking on the Chicago Blackhawks tonight at Capital One Arena. Here are the Caps lines, pairs, and starter.

Per Tarik El Bashir of The Athletic, here’s how the Capitals are lining up:

Ovechkin-Strome-Wilson
Milano-Backstrom-Oshie
Mantha-Kuznetsov-Smith
Protas-Dowd-Sheary

Fehervary-Carlson
Sandin-Jensen
Alexeyev-TvR

Kuemper

Nothing big from the forward front. No changes there it appears. On defense the obvious is the return of John Carlson who will be on the first pair with Martin Fehervary. There is a possibility that Rasmus Sandin and Fehervary could switch places. Darcy Kuemper gets the start in goal in his first game back from an upper body injury.

For Carlson, he took a slapshot to the head which is not your ordinary injury. He hasn’t played since Dec. 23 and there was an interesting nugget from Capitals senior writer Mike Vogel.

Tonight is the fist time all season they’ve had the 2017-18 Stanley Cup core of Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, Tom Wilson, John Carlson, T.J. Oshie, and Evgeny Kuznetsov in the lineup on the same night. No more Dmitry Orlov or Lars Eller as they were dealt ahead of the trade deadline.

Vogs also notes that it’ll be the first time all season that the Caps list of injured and unavailable players (Connor Brown and Carl Hagelin) is fewer than three players for any single game this season. It’ll also give us a first look at the top six defense for next season.

Vogel also said that although the Caps never had a full deck at any point last season either, they did have all six of their top six defensemen play between 72 and 79 games.

This season, only two defensemen have had a chance of playing as many as 72 games for the Caps. Those players are Trevor van Riemsdyk and Nick Jensen. Enjoy the game. Puck drop is next.