The Washington Capitals held a morning skate at Kettler Capitals Iceplex Sunday morning prior to Game 2 tonight. As the team took line rushes at the beginning of the skate, we got an indication on what the lineup would look like. Here are the lines and the scratches for tonight’s game.
CAPS LINES
Forwards
Ovechkin-Kuznetsov-Wilson
Burakovsky-Backstrom-Oshie
Connolly-Eller-Smith Pelly
Stephenson-Beagle-Chiasson
Defense
Kempny-Carlson
Orlov-Niskanen
Orpik-Jerabek
Scratches: Jakub Vrana (F), Shane Gersich (F), Travis Boyd (F), Christian Djoos (D), Madison Bowey (D)
Looks like Jay Beagle will finally be good to play. He missed the last three Capitals regular season games as well as Game 1 with an upper-body injury. Here he is taking face-offs with T.J. Oshie.
Oshie vs. Beagle in the face-off dot pic.twitter.com/2ghVZLpCu2
— NoVa Caps (@NoVa_Caps) April 15, 2018
Barry Trotz confirmed that Beagle and Michal Kempny will play in Game 2 which is no surprise considering both looked very good in Saturday’s practice. As for Jakub Vrana, who only played 6:58 in Game 1 despite having a great assist on Devante Smith-Pelly’s third period goal, he’ll be a healthy scratch tonight. Here he is taking the scratches skate.
Jakub Vrana taking the scratches skate #ALLCAPS pic.twitter.com/CoJ5awXRSD
— NoVa Caps (@NoVa_Caps) April 15, 2018
Puck drop for tonight’s game is at 7:30 p.m. and you can catch the game nationally on NBC Sports Network or locally on NBC Sports Washington
By Michael Marzzacco
Follow @marswaggo
Um, Vrana?
Jon, WTF?????????????????????
VRANA SCRATCHED??????? (and HEALTHY???????)
What the f*ck did he do wrong????
And (as always) why the f*ck is it that NOBODY in the local Caps media pool takes His Royal Baldness to task not just for sitting Jakub down for Game Two when we clearly need his speed and skill to help back opponents off, but also for playing him less than 7 minutes in Game One to begin with???
Seething (but not overly surprised),
Clifford
I’ve settled down on the 7 minutes in game one just because of all of the special teams time, but game two Vrana scratch is hard to swallow.
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Don’t understand how Vrana and Gersich are scratches. Did we not learn from the pens? A blend of youth and speed mixed with veterans and leadership is how other teams see round 3.
Apparently not. While it can probably be argued that, overall, Barry Trotz is the best coach we’ve ever had, from the looks of things he doesn’t retain or learn past lessons very well-at least not where young players, PT and line combos are concerned. He seems to coach strictly for the moment with little or no consideration given to the team’s long term success.
In this case I’d love to be eating my words a few weeks from now, because that mean that we will have managed to win despite Coach Trotz’ approach. But the catch-22 of it all is that if we DO make it to the finals, then in Barry’s mind (and GMBM’s) that would vindicate Trotz’ and his methods–pretty much guaranteeing that Vrana, Gersich, Connolly and Boyd, et al, will never get the PT that their talent suggests they deserve unless someone ahead of them gets injured, traded or leaves via free agency…
Disgusted,
Clifford
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