Tonight at 7:00 p.m. ET, the Carolina Hurricanes (15-16-9, 39 points) and Washington Capitals (20-15-5, 45 points) skate against each other for the fourth of five meetings this season live from the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. The game can be live streamed here. Carolina fans can hear all of the action on 99.9 The Fan while Washington fans can do the same on WFED 1500.
Carolina enters play having lost five of its final six games of 2013 while Washington has averaged just 1.75 goals per game throughout their last four games. The Hurricanes won the first two meetings this season which both took place in Washington with a 3-2 win in on Oct. 10 and 4-1 win Dec. 3 while the Capitals got a measure of revenge in the last meeting, scoring a 4-2 victory in North Carolina on Dec. 20.
The Capitals worked hard in practice on trying to turn around their recent scoring drought.
"We had a lot of shots [in the past two games]. But especially when you get a lot of point shots, you have to get traffic and find the rebounds. That's what we practiced today," forward Nicklas Backstrom told NHL.com following Capitals practice Wednesday.
Backstrom leads the team with 44 points off of 10 goals and 34 assists while Alex Ovechkin leads the NHL with 30 tallies and has 11 helpers to place second on the Caps with 41 points and Mikhail Grabovski has found the twine 11 times and added 19 assists for 30 points.
The Hurricanes snapped a five-game skid with a 5-4 come-from-behind win over the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday and traded for defenseman John-Michael Liles from the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday. He's expected to debut tonight.
"That's a huge win to build some momentum going into the New Year," Hurricanes coach Kirk Muller said per NHL.com.
Eric Staal has paced the Hurricanes with 33 points off of 10 goals and 23 assists while Jeff Skinner has 16 markers and 11 helpers for 27 points and Andrej Sekera has found the back of the net seven times and added 16 assists for 23 points.
Anton Khudobin will start for the Canadiens tonight and is 2-0-0 with a 2.00 goals-against-average and a .929 save percentage thus far this season while Braden Holtby is likely to start for the Capitals and is 13-10-2 with a 3.00 GAA and a .915 save percentage.
The Hurricanes look to win their second game in a row while the Capitals hope to find their offense when these teams hit the ice at the Verizon Center tonight in Washington, D.C.
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