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Morning Skate: Red Wings at Ducks - Game 7 Preview

By J.J. from Kansas
Gregory Shamus

10:00p ET, Honda Center

Anaheim, CA

TV: Fox Sports Detroit, NBCSN, FS-W, RDS, TSN

Radio: 97.1 The Ticket

Ducks Blogs: Anaheim Calling & Battle of California

Detroit Red Wings Tickets

Welp, here we are at Game Seven of the Wings' first round series against the 2-seeded Ducks. It's been a crazy series to this point. Four of the first six games went to OT and the Wings got all three of their wins via sudden death. Overall, each team has won two games at home and one on the road. In Anaheim, the matchups shift to Boudreau's preferred setup: Koivu's line trying to shut down the Datsyuk/Zetterberg line while Getzlaf and Perry try to take advantage of Franzen and Filppula.

After all the Ducks' whining after Friday's game, it would be silly to assume Detroit won't take any penalties in this one. The PK needs to step up huge and the PP needs to take advantage of any chances they're given.

No idea what to expect here. Hold onto your butts, this series is delivering on every promise so far.

As a note: The lineup right now is a guess. The diggers have been out this morning hinting that there won't be defensive changes for this one, but Babs is thinking about shuffling up the fourth line. I'm simply guessing Eaves will be back in for Samuelsson, but anything could happen.

The Expected Lineup

Henrik Zetterberg - Pavel Datsyuk - Justin Abdelkader

Johan Franzen - Valtteri Filppula - Daniel Cleary

Gustav Nyquist - Joakim Andersson - Damien Brunner

Patrick Eaves - Cory Emmerton - Todd Bertuzzi

*

Niklas Kronwall - Jonathan Ericsson

Brendan Smith - Kyle Quincey

Carlo Colaiacovo - Jakub Kindl

*

Jimmy Howard (starting)

Jonas Gustavsson

Scratches: Ian White, Mikael Samuelsson , and Jordin Tootoo

Injuries: Danny DeKeyser (thumb), Drew Miller (hand),and Darren Helm (back)

  • The Red Wings are 17-14 (W-L) all-time against the Anaheim Ducks in the postseason.
  • The Red Wings are 3-3 all-time versus the Ducks in the playoffs on Sundays.
  • The Ducks are 2-2 all-time in Game 7s. They're 1-0 all-time at home.
  • The last game seven I willfully remember, the Red Wings defeated the Phoenix Coyotes 6-1 April 27th, 2010
  • The last time these two teams met for a game seven was May 14th, 2009. Detroit won 4-3 on goals from Jiri Hudler, Darren Helm, Mikael Samuelsson and Daniel Cleary.
  • Jimmy Howard's career Game 7 stats: 1-1 2.02 GAA .937 SV%
  • Bruce Boudreau's favorite song is 'Da' Dip' by Freak Nasty because it reminds him of chips & salsa
Prediction: Insanity


Let's Go Red Wings.