Caps Stop at Home to Host Wings

Dec. 11 vs. Detroit Red Wings at Capital One Arena
Time:7:30 p.m.
TV:NBCSN
Radio:Capitals Radio 24/7, FAN 106.7
Detroit Red Wings 14-13-4
Washington Capitals 17-9-3

The Caps make a quick stop at home on Tuesday to host the Detroit Red Wings for the second and final time this season. Washington clipped the Wings by a 3-1 count here in the District on Black Friday, Nov. 23.
Washington is just back from a weeklong road trip in which it played three games in three different time zones, coming home with a 2-1-0 mark for the trip. After dropping the opener in Vegas on a late power-play goal, the Caps rebounded to down Arizona by a 4-2 score and the finished the trip with a flourish, dismantling the Columbus Blue Jackets 4-0 in Ohio on Saturday night.
After taking Sunday off, the Caps practiced on Monday at MedStar Iceplex. For the first time since mid-November, T.J. Oshie joined his teammates on the ice in a full practice situation. Oshie has missed the last 11 games with an upper body injury suffered in the aftermath of a Josh Morrissey bodyslam on Nov. 14 in Winnipeg, but he looked and sounded like a player close to returning on Monday.

"I've been hoping to play for a week, so I'm hoping to play [Tuesday]," says Oshie. "We'll see what the training staff says, we'll see what the doctors say, we'll see what the coaches say, but today was a full [practice] and I passed all the tests I had to pass. I was in a red jersey and not a baby blue or a soft blue as I like to call it.
"So, I'm hoping to [play]. I've got a good relationship with Serbs [head athletic trainer Jason Serbus] back there and we've been pretty patient with this thing since I've had a couple of them now. So I put my trust in him and see what he says and we'll go from there."
The Caps have won nine of 11 in Oshie's absence, but they're anxious to get him back. Washington will play its 30th game on Tuesday against the Wings, and the Caps have not had their full complement of players available for any of the previous 29. While missing some key players, the Caps are getting contributions from all over their lineup.

Saturday's win over the Jackets was a scrap for the top spot in the Metropolitan Division, and the Caps won it decisively. Washington grabbed an early lead on Brett Connolly's goal in the second minute of the first, and the Caps were up by 3-0 before the end of the first. Alex Ovechkin scored his league-leading 22nd goal of the season, Fourth-line winger Dmitrij Jaskin scored his first goal in a Caps sweater, and rookie forward Travis Boyd scored the first goal of his NHL career to give Braden Holtby more than enough offense for his second shutout of the season and the 34th of his NHL career.
The Caps effectively neutered the Jackets vaunted forecheck, and Washington's youthful defense pairing of Jonas Siegenthaler and Madison Bowey handled Columbus' forechecking heat with aplomb, each logging more than 16 minutes of poised work in a Saturday night road game against a divisional foe.
"I think they did a great job working away from the puck to establish their gap," says Caps coach Todd Reirden, "and then they went back really hard on their breakouts. I think if you can do that against any hard-forechecking team - if you can use your skating and your mobility to gain the net - then it will open up everything.
"But for me - and for our staff, talking about it - that was probably one of our best games of five-man, and including our goalie, six-man breakouts. We came back and we supported the puck low, and we were in great position whether we had to rim the puck and keep it on the yellow and we had to execute a wall play versus their pinching [defenseman], or we were in a situation where our [defensemen] had full control and our wingers could push out, and we could elongate the zone and get some speed that way."

Both Siegenthaler and Bowey went into Saturday's game averaging around 13 minutes a night this season, Siegenthaler over four games and Bowey over 19. Siegenthaler logged a single-game high of 16:25 and Bowey skated 16:45 against the Jackets, his second highest workload on the season. The combination of their strong play and the multi-goal cushion led to some extra minutes for the young duo.
"We didn't have to spend as much time in the defensive zone," notes Reirden, "and you get ahead in the game, and we've got to continue to put these guys in situations where they can grow and get better. I thought they both had a strong game, both Madison and Jonas as well."
The Caps have now won nine of their last 11 games, and they've scored three or more goals in each of those contests. That marks the Caps' longest run of offensive consistency since the vaunted 2009-10 team put together a remarkable 23-game run with three or more goals from Jan. 5-March 4, 2010.
Detroit got out to a rocky start, winning just one of its first 10 games. Since then, the Wings have had a few modest winning runs and perhaps more importantly, they've managed to keep a stream of points coming in. Detroit hasn't suffered consecutive regulation losses since late October.
That said, the Wings have trended in a sideways direction since the Caps saw them last here less than a month ago, on Black Friday. Entering the game with the Caps that afternoon, Detroit had won six of its previous seven games. Beginning with the 3-1 setback they took from Washington on Nov. 23, the Red Wings are 4-4-2.
For the Wings, Tuesday's tilt is also the second of two games in as many nights. Detroit earned a 3-1 victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Monday at Little Caesars Arena in Motown, earning a 1-1-0 split on a brief two-game homestand.