Morning Skate: Predators at Red Wings

8:00 PM ET, Bridgestone Arena

Nashville, Tennessee

TV: Fox Sports Detroit

Radio: 97.1 The Ticket

Predators Blog: On the Forecheck

Hello. Welcome back. I hope that you had a wonderful holiday break, ate a lot of food, and drank some tasty beverages. Hopefully Uncle Tom didn't get you too drunk last night, because we have a hockey game to play. Well, not us. The Red Wings do, but we have to watch. Actually, you don't have to watch. That's really up to you. Anyways...

I am still trying to shake off the last loss, where Detroit gave up three unanswered goals in the first period against the Devils. Tonight the Wings draw the Nashville Predators. A team who, in my opinion, are pretty much exactly like Detroit, just flip-flopped. Where Detroit has depth, and scoring talent up front, Nashville has depth on the blue line. In fact, they have the best depth in the entire NHL. Their top two scorers are Roman Josi, and Shea Weber. The last time these two teams met, Shea Weber scored a god damn hat-trick. Luckily for us, we won that game. If you don't recall, we had a bit of fairy dust, and unicorns on our side.

Anyways, Nashville is better than the last couple of teams Detroit has played. Oddly enough, Detroit has dominated Central Division opponents over the last couple of seasons. That's good, right? Who knows at this point. All I know is that we need to win this game. Go Wings. Get hungry. Please god don't come out slow, and sloppy.

Line Combinations

Red Wings' Lineup

Forwards

Dylan Larkin	Henrik Zetterberg	Justin Abdelkader
Darren Helm	Pavel Datsyuk	Brad Richards
Gustav Nyquist	Riley Sheahan	Tomas Tatar
Joakim Andersson	Luke Glendening	Tomas Jurco

Defensemen

Niklas Kronwall	Mike Green
Danny DeKeyser	Jonathan Ericsson (maybe)
Brendan Smith	Alexey Marchenko

Goaltenders

Petr Mrazek

Jimmy Howard

Scratches: Tomas Nosek, Jakub Kindl

Injuries: Johan Franzen, Kyle Quincey, Drew Miller, Teemu Pulkkinen

Predators' Lineup

Forwards

Filip Forsberg	Mike Ribeiro	Craig Smith
Colin Wilson	Calle Jarnkrok	James Neal
Viktor Arvidsson	Colton Sissons	Cody Hodgson
Eric Nystrom	Paul Gaustad	Miikka Salomaki

Defensemen

Roman Josi	Shea Weber
Barrett Jackman	Seth Jones
Mattias Ekholm	Ryan Ellis

Goaltenders

Pekka Rinne

Carter Hutton

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Predators	THE MATCH-UP	RED WINGS
17-11-6 (5th in Central, 40 pts)	Record	17-10-7 (4th in Atlantic, 41 pts)
2.59 (15th in NHL)	Goals Per Game	2.59 (15th in NHL)
2.50 (18th in NHL)	Goals Against Per Game	2.56 (13th in NHL)
20.9% (10th in NHL)	Power Play %	18.2% (17th in NHL)
76% (79th in NHL)	Penalty Kill %	81.6% (12th in NHL)
James Neal (13 goals)	Goal Leader	Dylan Larkin (13 goals)
Roman Josi (26 points)	Points Leader	Henrik Zetterberg (27 points)

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Game Day Prediction Contest

Would you like to predict the outcome of the game and potentially become internet famous? Well you're in luck, because here's your opportunity. Here's how it works.

Make your game predictions on the winning team, final score, and who the Wings player of the game will be. Enter the required information into the form below using the formats indicated in the questions. If you don't use those formats, your answers will be disregarded. All submissions are timestamped and will be accepted only until the official game start time. All other submissions after that will be disregarded. Only one submission per person, please. POTG will be determined by the collective of WiiM writers.

Each correct winning team prediction is worth 1 point. Each correct player of the game prediction is worth 2 points. Each correct final score prediction is worth 5 points. If you get all three correct you'll receive 15 points.