Per Alex Prewitt, Andre Burakovsky and Nate Schmidt return to active duty after a couple of games off… and that’s about all we know, because Barry Trotz is a sly, cagey man. One thing we do know? Braden Holtby gets his 11th-straight start (tying a career high), with some semblance of lines and defensive pairings in front of him. Here’s one (extremely uninformed and likely inaccurate) crack at what they could look like come 7:00 pm:
Alex Ovechkin – Nicklas Backstrom – Tom Wilson
Marcus Johansson – Evgeny Kuznetsov – Troy Brouwer
Brooks Laich – Eric Fehr – Joel Ward
Michael Latta – Andre Burakovsky – Jay Beagle
That leaves Justin Peters backing up Holtby, Jason Chimera and Jack Hillen potentially out as healthy scratches, and Dmitry Orlov, John Erskine and Aaron Volpatti still on the IR.