Caps Take on Habs in Quebec City on Thursday Night

September 20 vs. Montreal Canadiens at Videotron Center in Quebec City, Quebec
Time: 7:00 p.m.
TV: NBCSW
Radio: Capitals Radio 24/7
With the 2018-19 season opener now less than two weeks away, the Caps are getting set for a pair of back-to-back road exhibition games to conclude the workweek. First up is a Thursday trip north of the border to face the Montreal Canadiens, a game that will be played at Quebec City's Videotron Center.

From 1972-79 in the World Hockey Association and from 1979-95 in the NHL, the Quebec Nordiques provided Quebec City with a major league hockey team, one that won an Avco Cup title in 1977 before merging into the NHL in 1979-80. But the Nordiques have now been gone from the Quebec sporting landscape for as long as they were there; they moved to Denver and became the Colorado Avalanche in 1995-96. Adding insult to injury - or perhaps vice versa - the team promptly won the first of two Stanley Cup titles in its first season in the Mile High City. During its days in Quebec, the Nords never advanced past the conference final, getting that far in 1982 and 1985.
Videotron Center opened three years ago this month, and it seats 18,259 for hockey. The city hopes to entice the NHL to place an expansion team there in the not-too-distant future, but the League is wooing Seattle and has Quebec City on the back burner at the moment.
The Caps are seeking their first win of the preseason after going 0-1-1 in a home-and-home set with the Boston Bruins earlier in the week. Washington dropped a 2-1 shootout decision to the B's in Boston on Sunday and fell 5-2 to the Bruins in the Caps' home preseason opener on Tuesday. Thursday's game in Montreal is the first of three straight road exhibition games.
In the wake of Tuesday night's loss, the Caps took a day off the ice on Wednesday. But the coaching staff came together at MedStar Capitals Iceplex to make the first roster cuts of 2018 training camp, paring the squad down to 52 players (31 forwards, 15 defensemen and six goaltenders). Defensemen Alexander Alexeyev and Alex Kannok-Leipert and forwards Kody Clark, Eric Florchuk, Kristian Marthinsen and Riley Sutter were returned to their respective junior teams, and defenseman Martin Fehervary was loaned to HV71 of the Swedish Hockey League. Finally, goaltender Logan Thompson was released from his tryout.
For Thursday's game against the Habs, the Caps will have their top line intact for the first time in the preseason, as Alex Ovechkin, Evgeny Kuznetsov and Tom Wilson all make their 2018 preseason debuts. Washington defensemen Brooks Orpik and Michal Kempny are also expected to see action for the first time this fall against the Canadiens.
Goaltenders Pheonix Copley and Vitek Vanecek split the Caps' first preseason game in Boston on Sunday, and both were sharp in a 2-1 shootout loss. The Capitals will bring that same tandem with them to Quebec City on Thursday.
Expected to center Washington's fourth line against the Canadiens, Jayson Megna will make the trip to Quebec City, too. In doing so, he becomes the only Caps player to suit up for each of the team's first three preseason games. A right-handed center, Megna is in the mix to fill the fourth-line center slot left vacant when Jay Beagle signed with Vancouver last summer.
"What I wanted to do coming into camp was just to put my best foot forward and show them what I've got," says the 28-year-old Megna, a veteran of 113 NHL games. "Skating is one of my strengths, and I'll leave it up to them to decide where I fit in. I just want to come here and make sure I showcase myself in the right way, come in and work hard."
Megna is competing with Travis Boyd and Nic Dowd for that fourth-line center gig. All three are right-handed, but Boyd and Dowd are both on one-way contracts while Megna signed a two-way deal to join the Washington organization on July 1. After playing in a career high 58 games at the NHL level with Vancouver in 2016-17, Megna skated in just one NHL game and 25 with AHL Utica last season. An upper body injury kept him out of the Utica lineup from just before Christmas through early April of last season.
A mostly - if not entirely - different group of Caps will head in the opposite direction on Friday, heading south to Raleigh to take on the Carolina Hurricanes.
The Canadiens have split a pair of preseason home games so far, downing the New Jersey Devils 3-1 on Monday at Bell Centre and falling 5-2 to Florida on Wednesday at the same venue. Including Thursday's "home" game in Quebec City, the Canadiens will play five of seven preseason games on home ice. The Habs have two upcoming exhibition games each will fellow Atlantic Division denizens Toronto and Ottawa; they'll play each team once at home and once on the road.