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Your savory breakfast links:
- Ilya Samsonov has been better over the last two months, but the one thing missing from him is that one Big Save. [Rink]
- The East Division doesn’t just have a lot of very good teams - it also has some of the League’s best bench bosses. [Rink]
- Sneaking a peek at the week ahead for the Caps, which includes the final road trip of the season and a visit from the Flyers. [Rink]
- Recaps and other assorted musings on last night’s win from us, Vogs, Caps video (Laviolette, Carlson, Hathaway, recap), NHL, AP, WaPo, NBCSW, Peerless, NoVa Caps, RMNB, and BSB.
- It wasn’t always pretty, but last night’s win was one to rally around - and just another showing from a team that has thrived on adversity this season. [NBCSW]
- This time the adversity came in the form of a shortened bench, beginning with news that T.J. Oshie would sit out for personal reasons. [NBCSW]
- Then, Coach Laviolette announced that Evgeny Kuznetsov and Ilya Samsonov would be held out as punishment for being late to a team event. Awesome. [NBCSW]
- It did seem like the lineup would get a boost from the returns of Alex Ovechkin and John Carlson, but Ovechkin skated exactly one shift before this happened [NBCSW]:
#Caps captain Alex Ovechkin will not return to tonight’s game (lower body) #CapsRangers
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) May 3, 2021
- Oh, and then the team was down another forward for a bit because of an event that totally didn’t cause people to lose their minds and write crazy things. [No links available]
- Both Samsonov and Vitek Vanecek still have a lot to prove. [S&S]
- This last handful of games will be a warmup and a time to iron out any kinks for the playoffs. [THW, NoVa Caps]