Game 1: Join the live conversation, it’s for real!

It’s the season opener for the New York Rangers as they take on the Washington Capitals at the Capital One Arena.  It’s not just a new season, it will be the debut of TNT’s hockey coverage, their first hockey game ever.

This game has to be a grudge match with the new, tougher New York Rangers taking on Tom Wilson and the Washington Capitals.  Will this be the beginning of the passing of the Met Division  torch from the aging Capitals to the young and dynamic Rangers?

The main story line will be the rematch between Wilson and the new Rangers.  It’s a factor that has been looming large ever since the schedule came out and showed the two teams meeting in the season opener.

In Blue Line Station’s unscientific Twitter poll, we asked about a Ryan Reaves fight with Tom Wilson. Despite protestations from both teams that they are not looking for a fight, the overwhelming belief is it will happen and it will happen and it will happen early.

Over 48% of our respondents think it will happen in the first five minutes of the game with 7% believing it will happen at the opening faceoff. 15% think it will happen later in the game, while 37% think Wilson will look to avoid a fight with Reaves.

Those who believe he will duck a fight with Reaves have reason. He’s done it before.

Here’s what Wilson had to say.

Wilson knows it will be an emotional game saying  “My job is to play my game. You know…we’ve got a lot of good players in this room that can make things happen out there and capitalize on that. Emotions are going to be high I’m sure and you got to stay disciplined like any other night.”

“All I can really focus on is our room, our team, our organization and I’m having a big physical first night with the Rangers isn’t where we want to be this year. You know we have a lot of goals. I want to score goals I want to be a leader, I wanna take on more responsibility and get our team to the playoffs and hopefully more.”

Projected starting lineups

We won’t know the actual starting lineups until just before gametime, but this is a best guess.  The big question is whether Nils Lundkvist will make his debut for the Rangers while for Washington it is whether Alexander Ovechkin will be in the lineup.  If he is, he’ll be left wing on the top line with Kuznetsov and Wilson.

NEW YORK RANGERS

13 Lafrenière – 93 Zibanejad – 20 Kreider
10 Panarin- 16 Strome – 24 Kakko
21 Goodrow – 72 Chytil – 15 Gauthier
91 Blais – 17 Rooney – 75 Reaves

55 Lindgren – 12 Fox
79 Miller – 8 Trouba
12 Nemeth – 5 Tinordi (or 27 Lundkvist)

31 Shesterkin
40 Georgiev

WASHINGTON CAPITALS

24 Connor McMichael – 92 Evgeny Kuznetsov – 43 Tom Wilson
39 Anthony Mantha- 20 Lars Eller – 10 Daniel Sprong
73 Conor Sheary – Hendrix Lapierre – 77 T.J. Oshie
62 Carl Hagelin- 26 Nic Dowd – 21 Garnet Hathaway

42 Martin Fehervary – 74 John Carlson
9 Dmitry Orlov – 3 Nick Jensen
57 Trevor van Riemsdyk – 2 Justin Schultz

41 Vitek Vanecek
30 Ilya Samsonov

About the game and join the live conversation

Gametime is 730pm on TNT.   The radiocast will be on ESPN Radio 998.7 FM.   The good news is Kenny Albert will be calling the game for TNT.

It’s all for real and that means Blue Line Station will be hosting a live in-game conversation using the comments feature below. We’ve had some issues with the comments refreshing and are working on that, so please bear with us. One workaround is to change how the comments sort from “newest” to “oldest” and back to “newest” again.

Bugs aside, it’s always fun to interact with other Rangers fans during the games you can be sure there will be a lot to talk about.