Despres Makes NHL Debut Tonight

There are plenty of story lines heading into tonight’s Penguins – Capitals matchup in Washington. One of them is Simon Despres, who will be making his National Hockey League debut this evening.

The former Saint John Sea Dogs defenseman was called up by the Pittsburgh Penguins earlier today. He will become just the second player in Sea Dogs franchise history to play in an NHL game. Yann Sauve was the first, playing five games for the Vancouver Canucks last year.

Here are the expected line combinations and defense pairings for tonight.

Chris Kunitz - Sidney Crosby - Pascal Dupuis
Steve Sullivan - Evgeni Malkin - James Neal
Matt Cooke - Jordan Staal - Tyler Kennedy
Arron Asham - Richard Park - Craig Adams 

Paul Martin - Brooks Orpik
Matt Niskanen - Deryk Engelland
Roberto Bortuzzo - Simon Despres 

Marc-Andre Fleury

Pittsburgh head coach Dan Bylsma spoke to the media about Despres today.

"He is slated to play on the second (power-play) unit and sometimes that is not a whole ton of time on the power play, but he is slated to be out there on the power play," Bylsma told NHL.com. "He has played 10 or 11 games in exhibition and he's played minutes. I know he's more than capable of playing in a lot of different situations, playing a lot of defense, being able to go back for pucks and make plays. He's had two months of being a professional and developing, and I'm fully confident he can be in a lot of different situations tonight."

Here is Despres speaking to the media earlier today.

Game time is 8pm AST at the Verizon Center.