At the Rink: Ducks at Capitals

ARLINGTON, Va. -- Having each played on the road Thursday, neither the Anaheim Ducks nor the Washington Capitals held morning skates prior to their game at Verizon Center on Friday.

The Ducks defeated the Nashville Predators on Thursday, claiming sole possession of the NHL's best record with 74 points in a 5-2 victory.

Anaheim won without captain Ryan Getzlaf, who was a late scratch after aggravating a lower-body injury during warm-ups.

"Right now, it's just a game-time decision," Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau said. "We'll see how we feels before warm-up and we'll go from there. But we did, just in case, we brought up William Karlsson just in case he can't go, but he was feeling a lot better this morning."

Washington recalled goaltender Philipp Grubauer from the Hershey Bears of the American Hockey League on Friday and he will start.

Grubauer was 6-5-5 with a 2.38 goals-against average and .925 save percentage in 14 starts for the Capitals last season. He is 16-9-4 with a 2.03 GAA and .924 save percentage for Hershey this season, earning a selection to the 2015 AHL All-Star Classic as a replacement.

"We need to know organizationally where we are, where his development is," Capitals coach Barry Trotz said. "He played a lot of games last year for the [Capitals], and he's gone down to Hershey and been obviously one of the top goalies in the league, so we just want to take a look at him tonight. It's a decision that organizations sometime have to make. It was made, so we're going to go through with it and see where we are."

Justin Peters usually starts for the Capitals in the second of back-to-back games, with seven of his eight starts coming in such a situation. He is 1-5-0 in those games.

The Capitals broke a five-game road losing streak Thursday against the Ottawa Senators. The 2-1 win was their second this season when allowing the first goal and first since Nov. 7 against the Chicago Blackhawks.

Goaltender Braden Holtby made 25 saves and has allowed two total goals in his past four starts. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, he is the first Capitals goaltender since Jim Carey in 1996 to allow no more than two goals over a four-start span in one season.

Here are the projected lineups:

DUCKS

Rene Bourque – Ryan Getzlaf – Corey Perry

Andrew Cogliano – Ryan Kesler – Devante Smith-Pelly

Matt Beleskey – Rickard Rakell – Jakob Silfverberg

Patrick Maroon – Nate Thompson – Kyle Palmieri

Cam Fowler – Eric Brewer

Hampus Lindholm – Francois Beauchemin

Clayton Stoner – Sami Vatanen

Ilya Bryzgalov

Frederik Andersen

Scratched: Tim Jackman, Ben Lovejoy

Injured: None

CAPITALS

Alex Ovechkin – Nicklas Backstrom – Jay Beagle

Marcus Johansson – Evgeny Kuznetsov – Troy Brouwer

Brooks Laich – Eric Fehr – Joel Ward

Jason Chimera – Michael Latta – Tom Wilson

Brooks Orpik – John Carlson

Karl Alzner – Matt Niskanen

Jack Hillen – Mike Green

Philipp Grubauer

Braden Holtby

Scratched: Aaron Volpatti, Cameron Schilling, Justin Peters

Injured: Dmitry Orlov (wrist), John Erskine (neck surgery)

Status report: The Capitals sent forward Andre Burakovsky to Hershey of the American Hockey League to make room for Grubauer.

Who's hot: Ovechkin scored his 32nd goal of the season against the Senators, tying New York Rangers forward Rick Nash for the NHL lead. … Beleskey scored his career-high 20th goal of the season Thursday, two behind Perry for the Ducks lead.