Thursday Caps Clips: Wild @ Capitals Game Day

Your savory breakfast links:

• Previews of tonight’s visit from the Wild of Minnesota from Vogs, NHL.com and Peerless, and be sure to check out our SB Nation pals over at Ye Olde Hockey Wilderness for the other side of tonight’s match-up.
  • It’s Scandinavian Heritage Night at the Phone Booth, you betcha. [Caps Outsider]
  • And it is also another one of those interconference games, and the West has been smacking the East around quite a bit this year. [WaPo]
    
• Your Capitals Minute for today. [Capitals Voice]
• News and notes from yesterday out at Kettler. [Monumental video (Capitals Report, Rinkside Update (Johansson), Oates, Ovechkin)]
  • The Caps’ lead Facial Hair Correspondent Karl Alzner grabbed a mic and a camera crew to intimidate interview his ‘mates about their mo’s. [Monumental, DC Sports Bog]
  • Twenty sweaters per game and twenty-three rostered players means somebody’s got to sit out. That doesn’t make it any easier for Eric Fehr. [WaPo]
  • Hazing is in the news but not so much in the Caps’ dressing room. [WaPo, CSNW, 106.7 The Fan]
  • Radio hits from Braden Holtby… [ESPN 980]
  • …and Brooks Laich. [106.7 The Fan]
• Oh Caps, you can make it look so easy when you win. So why is winning so hard? [WaPo]
• Special teams, FTW:
  • A pretty powerful power play… [CSNW]
  • …is only rivaled by a killer penalty kill. [Dump ‘n’ Chase]
• In which #fancystats come to the Capitals Radio Network. [Capitals Voice]
• Just in case you were wondering if it’s still good to be Alex Ovechkin, consider:
  • His position atop the goal-scoring leaderboards since 2007. [Peerless]
  • His cameo in Laich’s new Verizon commercial. [RMNB]
  • His 1,000th pro point, recorded as that assist to #43. [Ibid.]
  • And his new music video from Russia with love. [Ibid.]
• Tom Wilson, artiste with puck… [WashTimes, NBC4]
• …and pen. [FanPost]
• “He needs to shorten his stick more, but it’s not easy to make changes. It’s a gradual process. It was a pole vault compared to what it is now. Ridiculous. It was like a pool skimmer.” Coach Oates explains Joel Ward‘s increasing production as a function of decreasing stick length. [NHL.com]
• Finally, meet Steve Oleksy, man of the people. With freshly-flossed teeth. [Caps Outsider]

More from Japers’ Rink: