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Capitals @ Oilers Game 11 Preview

After winning just one in their first eight, the Oilers look to make it three wins in a row.

By Jeff Chapman
Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

Caps

@
Edmonton
4-5-0, .88 p/g
 Ranks 3-6-1, .7 p/g
Eastern Conf: 11th
Western Conf: 13th
23rd P/G 24th
1st ST 21st
26th ES 21st
25th Goal 29th

7:30 PM MDT - Sportsnet
Rexall Place
Tickets

The Opposing view: Japers' Rink

Top Story:

The Oilers are looking to keep their win stream alive with a W versus a Capitals team that's got a two game win streak of their own. While the Capitals allow a lot of shots (averaging a tick over 34 per game), they're currently the number one power play team (a 31.4% success rate). The Oilers will once again look to emerge victorious without the services of Taylor Hall, who will miss his second straight game while he recovers from an MCL injury that's expected to last at least three or four more weeks.

The Oilers Are Saying:

"We got some young player who's trying to get his feet wet calling an organization a Junior team, people take notice, I knew it was gonna turn, it was one of those things, that was a total Hockey God thing, and I'm sure that young man has learned his lesson"
That's Coach Eakins offering up a soundbite on Canadiens forward Lars Eller, who said the Oilers were kind of like a "junior team". If this is what it takes to get the Oilers up and ready to play hockey, then we need some higher quality insults before every game.

The Capitals Are Saying:
We gave up way too many breakaways, way too many 2-on-1s and I don't know what the final number of turnovers was, but it probably wasn't pretty. Good on the guys for being resilient and finding a way to win tonight but there's not a whole lot that I feel that we should take out of this game other than continuing to battle.
That's Caps forward Troy Brower after his team's 5-4 shootout victory over the Winnipeg Jets. Caps goalie Braden Holtby faced a mountainous 47 shots in the victory. I've nothing snarky to say about this, other than it gave me a flashback to last year's defence, the year before that, the year before that, and the year before that. Good God, Washington, you'll probably want to have that looked at, because 47 shots is enough shots for two games, let alone one against the Jets.
  • After a truly intolerable start, Devan Dubnyk's last three games have seen him turn aside 101 of 108 shots, good for a .935 SV%. Toiling in the .820s a few weeks ago, his season average is up to .881, but there's still a ways to go before you can whip this number out in public without fear of it getting howled at.
  • Jordan Eberle has ten points, good for team lead. He's tied with one other player, Mark Arcobello of course. Of course.
  • To my amazement, the top six players didn't play a combined 57 minutes in Montréal like I'm sure we all had hoped for. With three games in the next four nights, don't be surprised if we end up seeing more of the bottom six (read: line four) than your stomach can handle. You'll hear that the fourth line isn't a problem with this team, because they only play six or seven minutes per night. I'm not completely sold on this theory.
Expected Lines and Pairings (check back for updates during the day)

Nail Yakupov - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins - Jordan Eberle

David Perron - Mark Arcobello - Ales Hemsky

Ryan Jones - Boyd Gordon - Tyler Pitlick

Ben Eager - Will Acton - Luke Gazdic

Anton Belov - Justin Schultz

Ladislav Smid - Jeff Petry

Nick Schultz - Andrew Ference

Devan Dubnyk


Marcus Johansson - Nicklas Backstrom - Alex Ovechkin

Martin Erat - Brooks Laich - Troy Brouwer

Jason Chimera - Mikhail Grabovski - Joel Ward

Aaron Volpatti - Eric Fehr - Tom Wilson

Karl Alzner - John Carlson

Nate Schmidt - Mike Green

John Erskine - Steve Oleksy

Braden Holtby

In This Stream

Capitals @ Oilers Gameday

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