Minnesota Wild vs. Washington Capitals: Game Preview

Hello, Wilderness!

It's time for a game day once again, as your Minnesota Wild take on the Washington Capitals at home tonight for their last meeting of the season.

2 nights ago, the Wild finally broke out of their losing ways by playing their hearts out to a 4-1 win over the Sabres.  Not a bad way to ring in the New Year.

The last time the Wild took on the Capitals was back in November at the Verizon Center in DC.  While the Wild frustrated the Caps throughout that whole game, a shootout was eventually forced with the only goal coming from the Caps' Backstrom to give them a 3-2 shootout win.

If the Wild play like they did against the Caps a few short months ago, they could pull off the win this time.  The Wild could very well have the advantage in this one if they play their cards right, as the Caps have now started a little skid of their own.  They have dropped their last 3 games to the Sabres, Senators, and Hurricanes.  Not a good way to ring in the New Year for them.  2 out of these 3 games were losses in a shootout and overtime though (a 2-1 shootout loss to the Sabres and a 4-3 OT loss to the Hurricanes).

As we all know, the Caps have some superstar players like Ovechkin, Backstrom, Brouwer, Erat, you get the idea. Should the Wild want to get another win tonight (which obviously they do), they'll need to limit these players as well as all their other ones from generating chances as much as possible.

Judging from how the WIld played on Thursday night to break their 6-game skid, I think that they could put together another winning performance tonight.

Could they do it again?  We'll find out tonight at 7.