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Wild Return To X Hoping To End Recent Caps Dominance |
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Wild Game Day number 18
Wild Record (11-4-2 24 pts)
Home Record (6-0-2)
Opponent: Washington Capitals (7-6-3 17 pts)
Road Record (2-3-1)
Site: Xcel Energy Center, St.Paul, MN
Time: 7:00PM CT
TV: Fox Sports North (FSN)
Last season results:
11/18 Wild 1 @ Capitals 3
2/15 Capitals 5 @ Wild 2
Tonight the Wild return home for the first time since their October 27th 3-2 victory over Colorado. A two and half week 7 game road swing and a 5-2-0 record later has the Wild sitting in 2nd place in the Central, 3 points behind Conference leading Nashville.
Minnesota's opponent tonight is none other than the defending Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals, who are opening a five game road trip of their own, following a rather pedestrian 2-2-1 homestand, in which the Caps dropped the final two.
Washington has owned Minnesota over the past several seasons and enter tonight having won the past seven meetings in the series.
For the Capitals they have experienced a bit of a Stanley Cup hangover riding currently just a game over .500 and sitting in 7th place in the Metropolitan Division.
The big news tonight will be the abrupt end to the Tom Wilson suspension, immediately making him eligible to return this evening. Interesting timing of course for a "Minnesota Nice" welcome passively aggressive of course, because we would have it no other way.
Phoenix Copley will be between the pipes for the Caps, giving Braden Holtby the night off.Devan
The Wild are coming off a very successful road trip, but typically teams returning home after lengthy road trips tend to experience a bit a let down. Bruce Boudreau has done a fabulous job keeping his team engaged through the first month and a half and I fully anticipate that he is well aware of a potential letdown and will have his lines rolling early.
Wild projected lines:
Zucker-Staal-Granlund
Parise-Koivu-Niederreiter
ErikssonEk-Coyle-Greenway
Foligno-Fehr-Brown
Suter-Dumba
Brodin-Spurgeon
Seeler-Pateryn
Dubnyk
Stalock
It's always Hockey Day in the State of Hockey!
Follow me on Twitter @dwallace17