Per Mike Vogel, Jay Beagle will make his season debut taking Brooks Laich‘s spot on the second/third/whatever line (with Laich having been placed on IR), and Michael Latta draws in for Chris Brown on the fourth line. Otherwise, it’s status quo (at least to start), so expect the Caps to look something like this:
Alex Ovechkin – Nicklas Backstrom – Troy Brouwer
Jason Chimera – Eric Fehr – Joel Ward
Marcus Johansson – Andre Burakovsky – Jay Beagle
Liam O`Brien – Evgeny Kuznetsov – Michael Latta
That leaves Justin Peters as the back-up goalie, Brown and Jack Hillen as healthy scratches, Laich and Aaron Volpatti out with short-term injuries, and Tom Wilson, Dmitry Orlov and now likely John Erskine out long-term.