It’s not like there was any great surprise when it came to who was going to start Monday’s game in Washington, but Olie Kolzig will officially face his former team for the first time on national television Monday night. Kolzig admitted he’s going to be emotional when he steps on the ice tomorrow. He’s been thinking about this game quite a bit in the past few days, especially since Mike Smith has started the first three games on the five-game road trip.

Kolzig, of course, spent the first 18 years of his career in the Capitals organization. But things didn’t end on the best of terms last year after Washington general manager George McPhee traded for Crisotbal Huet at the trade deadline last year, which essentially pushed Kolzig out the door, and not because of Huet coming in, but because of the lack of communication between himself and management last year. Kolzig said McPhee never reached out to him after the Huet trade until the Capitals had lost Game 7 of their first-round playoff series against Washington. By then, it was too late to mend any fences.

The Capitals are planning a video tribute to Kolzig tomorrow night and Washington coach Bruce Boudreau had some nice things to say about Kolzig’s return to the Washington Post

Here are a couple of exerpts from a Q&A with Kolzig that runs in the newspaper in tomorrow:

Q: What kind of reception do you think the fans will give you?

A: I don’t know, I really don’t. The players who have come back in the past, like Jeff Halpern a former Washington captain came back with Dallas and he got the old Larry Murphy “whoop-whoop-whoop’’, so it will be interesting when I go behind the net to play a puck if I get a little bit of that. I expect to be received very well, but you always have to expect the unexpected.

Q: Did you have to ask coach Barry Melrose to play in this game or did he plan it this way?

A: He called me into the office last week and asked me if I wanted to play. He said he’s had some players in the past who have been in this situation who didn’t want to play, but I said that I definitely wanted to play and I appreciated that and he said that I was in. So that’s how that happened.

Q: Do you hold any hard feelings with the way things ended in Washington last year following the team’s acquisition of Cristobal Huet?

A: I still wish it didn’t end the way it did, but having said that I hold no hard feelings, I hold no grudges. Everybody in that organization is a friend of mine and 20-plus teammates and I wish them nothing but the best, except obviously when we play them. But it is what it is. I wish it didn’t end the way it did, but it’s time to move on and I’ve come to grips with it. There’s no bitterness. Obviously going out there tomorrow I want to beat them as bad as anybody, but I don’t have any malicious feelings or anything like that against them.