The Washington Capitals will end their four-game road swing at Tampa Bay tomorrow night with a 7:30 p.m. date with the Lightning.
The Lightning, by the way, are fighting for the eighth and final playoff spot in the East, but are six points back of eighth place and have three teams ahead of them for that final spot.
I’m not sure why the Capitals’ schedule has them starting in the Miami area with a game against the Panthers, then up to Carolina, then back down to Florida for their matchup with the Lightning. Seems like figuring out a way for the Capitals to play two games in Florida and then go up to Carolina would be more efficient, but I suppose I’m splitting hairs.
Anyway, as I was perusing Twitter on Friday I came across the fact that Steven Stamkos has scored 58 goals since February, 17, 2009.
Impressive, right? It’s even more impressive when one considers that during that same time-span, Alex Ovechkin has scored just one more goal than Stamkos. And Sidney Crosby, one fewer.
I’ve seen Stamkos play sparingly over the course of that time frame — in other words, whenever the Lightning play the Capitals. Stamkos has always impressed me, especially his lightning-quick release. Stamkos also displays a role on the power play not dissimilar to Alex Ovechkin, lurking on the point until the appropriate pass comes his way for a laser beam of a slap shot into the back of the net.
Speaking of Ovechkin, he’s coming back on Saturday night. With his two-game suspension served, Ovechkin re-joins the game-day roster. The Capitals went 1-0-1 without Ovechkin in the lineup.
With the return of Ovechkin, I’m interested to see how Bruce Boudreau shuffles his lines around. I feel one particular line has sparkled with the absence of Ovechkin — the third line of Jason Chimera, Brendan Morrison and Eric Fehr. That line doesn’t always produce in terms of goals, but boy, they’ve really been flying around out on the ice.
The addition of Ovechkin means that line may have to get split up as a part of trickle-down effect. Tomas Fleischmann obviously gets pushed off of the first line so that Ovechkin can re-join Nicklas Backstrom and Mike Knuble on the top line. Fleischmann’s new line assignment could break up the third line that I think has looked so good recently.
I could see Fleischmann joining the third line and either Fehr or Chimera dropping down to the fourth line, which I feel would under-utilize the abilties of either of those two. But I can’t see Fleischmann centering a second line of Brooks Laich and Alexander Semin because of Fleischmann’s inability to consistently win faceoffs.
How many teams and fan bases would just love to be having this debate? Just too much offensive talent (sigh).
On a different topic, I think it’s a safe bet that Jose Theodore gets the start tonight.
I’ll take the Capitals in Ovechkin’s return by a score of 5-3. Tom Poti gets a goal.
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Lol yes, too much offensive talent! The horror!
Maybe Bruce will switch things up a little bit tonight. I’m guessing it’s a good time to continue to play around with things, as the regular season begins to wrap up. That 3rd line was looking HOT the past two games.