Oilers Game Day – Washington Comes Calling

Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals roll in to Rexall Tonight to take on the Oilers. The Caps are coming off a 5-4 shoot out win over the Jets on Tuesday night and have three wins their last 5 games including a 4-2 win over the Oilers last Monday.

The Oilers on the other hand are returning home from a long six game road trip where they went 2-3-1 and returned home with five of a possible twelve points.

The Oilers

Up Front

Yakupov – RNH – Eberle

Perron – Arco – Hemsky

Jones – Gordon – Pitlick

Gazdic – Acton – Eager

On the Blueline

Smid – Petry

Ference – N. Schultz

Belov – J.Schultz

Between the Pipes

Devan Dubnyk

This is the exact same line-up as Tuesday’s game against Ottawa. Taylor Hall, Sam Gagner, Jesse Joensuu, Steve Macintyre and Cory Potter remain out with injuries. Ryan Smyth is nursing a sore groin and won’t play and Nick Schultz is a healthy scratch.

The Capitals

*The capitals line combinations have not been released as of this writing, Below are the line combinations from their game on Tuesday. Line combinations from dailyfaceoff.com

Up Front

Johansson – Backstrom – Ovechkin

Erat – Laich –Brouwer

Chimera – Grabovski – Ward

Volpatti – Fehr – Wilson

On the Blueline

Schmidt – Green

Alzner – Carlson

Erskine – Olesky

Between the Pipes

Brayden Holtby

What To Watch For

• Last week when the Oilers were in Washington I tweeted that I thought Nail Yakupov would finally get off the snide and score a goal. I was thinking that Yak City would be extremely motivated to play against fellow country man Alex Ovechkin. That was until Dallas Eakins declared that Yakupov would be a healthy scratch for the second straight game. Well tonight he plays, and I fully expect him to score his first goal of the season tonight.
• Tyler Pitlick plays his second NHL game tonight and it’s going to be interesting to see if he can have a repeat performance. I thought he played great last night making the plays that needed to happen, he can hit and he can skate. Pretty pleasing so far
• Brayden Holtby draws in tonight for the Caps. Holtby is from Lloydminister so will probably have a lot of friends and family at the game, shouldn’t be too hard for him to stay motivated for this one,

Should be a fun one, #GOILERS

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