Kansas City, Here We Come

More than four decades after their last visit to Kansas City, the Capitals head back to western Missouri to face the St. Louis Blues in a preseason game at Sprint Center on Wednesday night. The Caps and Blue tangled at Verizon Center in Washington two nights ago, with the Capitals prevailing 2-1 in the shootout.

Around this time 42 years ago, the Washington Capitals and the Kansas City Scouts were preparing to embark upon their maiden voyages as expansion NHL teams, the 17th and 18th teams in the league at that juncture.

With Hockey Hall of Famers Milt Schmidt (Capitals) and Sid Abel (Scouts) in the general manager's chairs for both teams, Washington and Kansas City conducted their expansion draft on June 12, 1974 in the Grand Salon of the stately Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal.

The NHL conjured up some lopsided draft rules, enabling existing teams to protect 15 skaters and two goaltenders at the outset of the draft. The Caps and Scouts were left to pick over the bones of what remained, which wasn't much, given that the league had expanded from six to 18 teams in less than a decade and was also competing with the 14-team World Hockey Association, an upstart major league that began operations in 1972-73. To make matters worse, each time an existing NHL team lost a player to the Caps or Scouts in that draft, it was permitted to add another player to its protected list.

Washington won all of eight games (8-67-2) during its first season, and it did not reach the playoffs until its ninth season in the league. Kansas City won 15 games (15-54-11), but dipped to a dozen wins in '75-76 and that was all she wrote. The Scouts packed up and left KC after just two seasons, heading west to Denver and becoming the Colorado Rockies.

The Rockies snuck into the playoffs in 1977-78, the fourth season of the franchise's existence, but it was their lone playoff voyage in the first 13 years of existence. By the time it made a second postseason appearance, the team had moved to New Jersey where it became the Devils.

Tonight, the Caps head to Kansas City for the first time since Feb. 7, 1976. That was the same night Toronto's Darryl Sitter established the modern day NHL standard for points in a game (10) when he hung a double hat trick and four assists on the Boston Bruins and goaltender Dave Reece.

Halfway across the continent on that same night, the Caps absorbed a 5-1 humbling at the hands of the Scouts at Kemper Arena in the sixth game of a seven-game road trip.

That triumph over the Capitals turned out to be the last win the Scouts ever earned, in Kansas City or anywhere else for that matter. The Scouts went 1-35-8 in their final 44 games of their last season in Missouri.

Wednesday's game against the Blues comes on the heels of a strong Monday night effort from the Caps against St. Louis. Washington fell behind on a power-play goal in the first period, but rallied to tie it at 1-1 on Paul Carey's goal early in the third. Andre Burakovsky's shootout goal gave the Caps the win, lifting them to 2-1-1 in preseason play.

"[The Blues] didn't get a lot of chances tonight," said Caps coach Barry Trotz after the game. "They forechecked and had good structure, but they didn't have a lot of chances. We had a few more, but we've got to find the net a little bit more. I'd like it to analytically be better offensively by scoring some more goals. We have the shots, but we've got to find the back of the net a little bit more."

Washington has scored only six goals in its four preseason games, and only two of those tallies has come at even-strength. The Caps have surrendered only nine goals in four games, and more than half of those came in last Tuesday's 5-2 loss to the Canadiens in Montreal.

The Caps didn't score on the power play in Monday's win over the Blues, but the put a dozen shots on St. Louis netminder Carter Hutton over the course of four extra-man opportunities in that game.

Washington has drawn 25 power plays in its four preseason games, and it has converted on four of those opportunities. The Caps' full complement of power play personnel has yet to take the ice at the same time during the preseason, and the unit has performed fairly well in light of that fact.

"We all have the same reads, and the coaches do a great job of bringing the guys that are new or that get [promoted to the PP] up to speed really quickly," said Caps defenseman John Carlson after Monday's game. "A lot of the times, when you're playing with all those great players on the ice, you're instantly better. It's not much of a change. I think it's a few little tendencies that will certainly get better. But I think we moved it around pretty well tonight and we got enough chances to deserve [a power-play goal], that's for sure."

Here's how we expect the Caps to look when they take the ice in Kansas City tonight:
Forwards
8-Ovechkin, 92-Kuznetsov, 77-Oshie
65-Burakovsky, 19-Backstrom, 14-Williams
16-Galiev, 82-Sanford, 10-Connolly
26-Winnik, 83-Beagle, 39-Thomas

Defensemen
27-Alzner, 2-Niskanen
44-Orpik, 74-Carlson
88-Schmidt, 4-Chorney

Goaltenders
31-Grubauer
70-Holtby