No lineup changes tonight for the Caps. Steve Eminger and John Erskine are the scratches with the team at 22 players after Joe Motzko was sent to Hershey. Tomas Holmstrom will return to the Detroit lineup. He was putting up excellent numbers playing with Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg, and then Daneil Cleary put up excellent numbers playin with those two in his absence. I'm not doubting Holmstrom's or Cleary's abilities, but there is a theme there. Detroit coach Mike Babcock plans to play his top line against the Ovechkin-Backstrom-Pettinger trip as much as he can. Some teams shy from matching top lines, but Babcock thinks his guys will play keep away with the puck. Considering his team has taken 88 shots in the past two games, he might be onto something.

Not to be lost in Ovechkin's first trip to Detroit or Backstrom playing against Hasek and the Seven Swedes is Tomas Fleischmann's first game in Joe Louis Arena. He was drafted by Detroit in 2002 and traded to the Caps in the Robert Lang deal during the great salary purge of Spring 2004. Fleischmann went to two training camps with the Red Wings at Traverse City, Mich.

"It was still my junior time, but I was drafted to this team," Fleischmann said. "I thought my first NHL game would here, but I am here finally."
-- Corey Masisak