The Washington Capitals get their earliest start on a week so far this season, having played the Arizona Coyotes on Sunday afternoon, the first of what will be a four-game week, three of them to be played west of the Mississippi (depending on where you stand on where Xcel Energy Center sits in Saint Paul, Minnesota) in what is “Western Conference Week.”
The Opponents
This year’s edition of the Arizona Coyotes are not a pushover that they might have seemed in years past, and that’s before getting to the part where they have been especially annoying to the Caps (the Caps are 2-2-1 in their last five games against Arizona before Sunday).