Morning Skate: Bouncing Back

Sunday's game sucked.

The Wings seven game winning streak ended and it ended to a crappy team, the Colorado Avalanche.

But there is a chance for redemption tonight. A chance to not only avenge the loss from last game, but to avenge the loss to the Blues from a few weeks ago.

St. Louis has played well lately since the team hired Ken Hitchcock as their coach. Their defense is good. They're second in the league in goals against and have a goalie playing out of his mind. But guess what? That's not going to last. They've dropped two in a row and they just might be falling back to Earth as we know it. Detroit has the talent to beat this team. They have the talent to score on their defense and they have the talent to stop them from scoring (and let's face it...the Blues suck at scoring this season).

The key to this game is specialty teams. The Blue have the worst power play in the league and their penalty kill is ranked 24th. Detroit, having the 8th best power play, absolutely MUST score when they have the man advantage and absolutely CANNOT let the Blues score with the man advantage. This is a clear weakness for the Blues and the Wings have to exploit it.

St. Louis Game Time is your SBNation Blues' blog

Puck drop is just after 7:30p ET on FSD for the local fans and Versus for us out of towners.

The Expected Lineup

Johan Franzen -- Pavel Datsyuk -- Todd Bertuzzi

Jiri Hudler -- Henrik Zetterberg -- Danny Cleary

Cory Emmerton -- Darren Helm -- Chris Conner

Drew Miller -- Justin Abdelkader -- Tomas Holmstrom

Nicklas Lidstrom -- Ian White

Niklas Kronwall -- Jonathan Ericsson

Brad Stuart -- Jakub Kindl

Jimmy Howard (starting)

Ty Conklin

Scratches: Mike Commodore and Cory Emmerton (maybe)

Injuries: Valtteri Filppula (shin), Jan Mursak (ankle) and Patrick Eaves (jaw)

Filppula is a game-time decision with a cut on his lower right shin. If the team's equipment geniuses can adjust his skate to avoid putting pressure on the wound, Flip will play. He'll also be wearing Kevlar socks. If he does play, the lines will be remain the same as we say in Buffalo and Colorado. If he cannot go, Cleary will move up and take Flip's spot on the second line and Emmerton will play the wing with Helm and Conner. UPDATE: Filppula is out, Emmerton is in.

RED WINGS	HOW THEY MATCH UP	BLUES
16-8-1	Record	14-9-3
2.96 (T-7th)	Goals Per Game	2.42 (22nd)
2.24 (6th)	Goals Against Per Game	2.12 (2nd)
19.4% (8th)	Power Play %	9.2% (30th)
80.6% (T-22nd)	Penalty Kill %	80.2% (24th)
Johan Franzen (12 goals)	Goal Leader	David Backes (9 goals)
Johan Franzen (25 points)	Points Leader	Alexander Steen (18 points)

• The Red Wings are 112-107-37-7 (W-L-T-OTL) all-time against the Blues.
• St. Louis is 8-2-3 since Ken Hitchcock took over as coach.
• Detroit will likely face Blues goalie Brian Elliot tonight. Elliot is 10-2-0 this season and leads the league with a 1.53 GAA and .945 SV%.
• The Wings have yet to alternate wins and losses this season. So far this season they've won 5, lost 6, won 4, lost 2, and won 7 before losing on Sunday night in Colorado. If this season tells us anything it's that the Wings will lose tonight. However, I think we'll see a change in the pattern tonight.
• Sunday's loss marked the first time this season that the Wings lost a game that the Mule registered a point in. With that said, you still need to feed the Mule.

Prediction: Wings will bounce back and avenge their last loss to the Blues and make up for the lackluster effort against the Avs. Wings win 3-1 and Henrik Zetterberg is your player of the game.

Let's Go Red Wings.