7:02 PM: Alex Georgiev will start for the Rangers.

3:01 PM: Dryden Hunt and Jarred Tinordi will play tonight against the Capitals. (Stephenson)

Nils Lundkvist, Libor Hajek and Julien Gauthier will be scratched. (Stephenson)

The lines expected to be used tonight are:

• Alexis Lafreniere, Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider
• Artemi Panarin, Ryan Strome, Kaapo Kakko
• Barclay Goodrow, Filip Chytil, Dryden Hunt
• Sammy Blais, Kevin Rooney, Ryan Reaves
  • Ryan Lindgren, Adam Fox
  • K’Andre Miller, Jacob Trouba
  • Jarred Tinordi, Patrik Nemeth

Gerard Gallant would not reveal who is starting in net.

Vitek Vanecek will start for the Caps and Alex Ovechkin is a game time decision.

Gallant spoke before the game and said (NYR):

• On setting a precedent of toughness, “that started at the first day of training camp, when we acquired those players in the summertime. It’s not about toughness, it’s about making our team harder to play against. I mean they keep bringing up the incident last year isn’t gonna happen tonight and if it did happen we’d get a response, the response wasn’t there last year. That incident is in the past, we’re not worried about that. We’re worried about getting our team to play the right way and play the game the way we want them to play. Like I said last year is over with, we addressed that. Now if that incident happened tonight, it’ll be addressed and so it’s a different scenario.”
• On the decision on who to start tonight, “Back to back games. We’re obviously not gonna, very seldom we’re ever gonna play goalies back and back it might happen once in a while but you know we got two good goalies and we are very confident in our goaltending.”
• You don’t think the starter will go back to back, “Not very often but I’m not saying it’s not gonna happen tomorrow but not very often.”
• On Barlcay Goodrow getting an “A”,  Well discussed a lot of things in the month that I’ve been here about the captaincy and the “A”s and all that. Barclay’s won two Stanley Cups recently, he’s a character guy, got to know him a little bit in training camp, talked to other people about him, other coaches about him. It was tough choices, obviously, it took us a long while, but he is a good choice for sure.”