Wild vs. Capitals: Game preview, tale of the tape, how to watch

Minnesota Wild vs. Washington Capitals

7:00 PM Central

Watch on: Fox Sports North

Listen on: KFAN 100.3; Wild Radio Network

"What can't we do when we get in it?

We'll work it through within a minute.

We have to try. We'll pay the price.

It's do or die... Hey, I've died twice!"

With just 29 games left on the year, the Wild don't have much time to get their fire back and save their season. The Wild continued their free fall against Dallas Tuesday night, losing their 11th game in their last 12. Having just one win in 3 weeks is a nightmare about a plague, but there are signs that Dawn could be coming for Minnesota. The Wild's last two games saw them play both St. Louis and Dallas (two Top-5 teams) pretty evenly, and even though they managed just one point, they at least played better hockey than we saw from them in weeks.

They'll definitely need to play that way once more, with feeling. To those of you that don't pay attention to the Eastern Conference, the Washington Capitals are really good. Unsurprisingly, they lead the league in goals- their offense has always been prone to making opponents spontaneously combust- but what's gotten them to another level is how disgustingly good Braden Holtby has been. Behind a team where all he would need to do is be competent, he's been a Vezina candidate, posting a .928 Sv% over 43 games. Holtby is the reason the Caps have legitimate Cup aspirations.

Though having 500-goal-scorer Alex Ovechkin certainly doesn't hurt. Ovechkin's claim to fame is to main and mangle defensemen around the league, and with 6 goals in 8 games against Minnesota, the Wild haven't been exempt from Ovechkin's wrath.

The biggest storyline for this game from Minnesota's perspective is going to be Mike Yeo, who's team has appeared to just be going through the motions since the New Year. This scrutiny isn't just of fan origin, beat writer Michael Russo reported yesterday that sources within the Wild organization indicate that Yeo's job security may be worse than we think. Hell, even bunnies are no longer under Yeo's spell. Bunnies!

Will the Wild have something to sing about? Can they walk through the fire and win a game? We may all have got a theory, but we won't know the answers for sure until tonight at 7:00 PM. Make sure to stick with Hockey Wilderness throughout the day, and join us for our Game Thread tonight.

But now I gotta run. See you all at the Xcel. Here's the Tale of the Tape and projected lineups for tonight.

Projected Lineups

Minnesota Wild

Left Wing	Center	Right Wing
Zach Parise	Mikko Koivu	Charlie Coyle
Nino Niederreiter	Mikael Granlund	Jason Pominville
Thomas Vanek	Erik Haula	Jason Zucker
Ryan Carter	Jarret Stoll	Justin Fontaine

Left Defensemen	Right Defensemen
Ryan Suter	Christian Folin
Marco Scandella	Mathew Dumba
Nate Prosser	Mike Reilly

Goalies

Devan Dubnyk

Darcy Kuemper

Washington Capitals

Left Wing	Center	Right Wing
Alex Ovechkin	Nicklas Backstrom	T.J. Oshie
Andre Burakovsky	Evgeny Kuznetsov	Justin Williams
Jason Chimera	Marcus Johansson	Tom Wilson
Brooks Laich	Mike Richards	Michael Latta

Left Defensemen	Right Defensemen
Nate Schmidt	John Carlson
Karl Alzner	Matt Niskanen
Dmitri Orlov	Taylor Chorney

Goalies

Braden Holtby

Philipp Grubauer