Music: {allcanada} CANADIENS (1-0-0) at CAPITALS (0-0-0)

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

{allcanada} CANADIENS (1-0-0) at CAPITALS (0-0-0)

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CANADIENS (1-0-0) at CAPITALS (0-0-0)

TV: SN360, RDS, CSN-DC

Thursday, October 9, 2014

7:00 PM ET

Season series: The Washington Capitals won two of three games against the Montreal Canadiens last season and are 10-2-0 in the past 12. Alex Ovechkin led the Capitals with three goals and an assist and was plus-3; he was minus-38 against the rest of the NHL. This is the Canadiens' only visit to Verizon Center in 2014-15; the other two games are at Bell Centre, on Jan. 31 and April 2.

Canadiens team scope: Montreal comes to Washington after opening its season with a 4-3 road victory against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday. Tomas Plekanec scored his second goal of the game with 42.9 seconds left in the third period to give Montreal the victory after Toronto defenseman Morgan Rielly had tied the game 1:36 earlier, earning praise from his coach. "He's playing with two good offensive players in [Alex] Galchenyuk and [Brendan] Gallagher, and he scored two big goals for us," Michel Therrien said. "Pleky was really good."

Capitals team scope: Barry Trotz will be behind the bench when Washington begins its 40th season in the NHL. He's the 17th coach in franchise history and takes over for Adam Oates, who was fired after the Capitals missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2007. Trotz coached the Nashville Predators from their inception in 1998 through last season. He said he's happy with the way the players have bought into the atmosphere and attitude he's tried to install. "I can't say that accurately because I didn't know where it was going to be. I knew where I wanted it to go, but I didn't know where we'd be on Day One," he said after practice Wednesday. "To this point, I'm very pleased, and it's a credit to the players. They are extremely coachable, they've bought in, they want to do everything to have success as a group. There's some fantastic people in that room that I didn't know, not only as players but as people."

CBS Sports Fantasy Hockey / Los Angeles Kings Stanley Cup 2014 Champions