Minnesota Wild vs. Washington Capitals: Gamethread

Minnesota Wild

vs

Washington Capitals

Verizon Center @ 7 ET/6 CT

TV: FS-N, CSNMA

Radio: KFAN 100.3 FM; listen on wild.com

Tonight's lines look to be the same as Tuesday's (with the exception of Prosser taking Ballard's place with Stoner because of his injury):

Minnesota Wild:

Zach Parise - Mikko Koivu - Charlie Coyle

Nino Niederreiter - Mikael Granlund - Jason Pominville

Matt Cooke - Kyle Brodziak - Justin Fontaine

Dany Heatley - Zenon Konopka - Torrey Mitchell

Ryan Suter - Jared Spurgeon

Marco Scandella - Nate Prosser

Clayton Stoner - Mathew Dumba

Josh Harding - Niklas Backstrom

Washington Capitals:

Martin Erat - Nicklas Backstrom - Alex Ovechkin

Brooks Laich - Marcus Johansson - Troy Brouwer

Jason Chimera - Mikhail Grabovski - Joel Ward

Aaron Volpatti - Michael Latta - Tom Wilson

Karl Alzner - John Carlson

Nate Schmidt - Mike Green

Alexander Urbom - Steve Oleksy

5 Questions:

1. Despite the slow start the Wild have had in the first period over the past few games, they've managed to pick up the pace and then come out with the W.  Can they keep that going tonight?

2. The Capitals lines are full of some amazing players.  Will our defense do what they can to prevent them from getting scoring chances as much as possible?

3. Harding has been amazing so far with a GAA and SV% that lead all the NHL right now.  Can he keep his hot streak going and prevent the Capitals from scoring when he can?

4. Our penalty kill was perfect in our last game, as we didn't allow any PPGs in our game on Tuesday against the Flames.  Can they keep that going against this team who has the league's best power play percentage?

5. Relating to my previous question, can the WIld stay out of the box as much as possible tonight?