Gameday Updates: Wings v. Canucks, Projected Lineups, Keys to the Game

With the Wings having played last night, there’s not a lot of updates. While Nyquist’s injury is listed as “not serious”, we’re not expecting to see him tonight.

Red Wings Lineup (listed by uniform number because we have no idea what the lines are going to look like)

Nick Jensen - Justin Abdelkader - David Booth
Tomas Tatar - Scott Wilson - Mike Green
Petr Mrazek - Jimmy Howard - Anthony Mantha
Henrik Zetterberg - Luke Glendening - Martin Frk

Darren Helm - Frans Nielsen
Jonathan Ericsson - Niklas Kronwall
Xavier Ouellet - Dylan Larkin

Andreas Athanasiou
Trevor Daley

Keys to the Game

Don’t fall asleep

I’m not just talking to the Wings fans here. Back to backs are tough, back to backs across timezones are tougher, and daylight savings time always makes a mess of internal clocks. The good news is, the Wings are coming off a great win that will give them confidence coming into tonight. Vancouver is unpredictable, and we have to make sure to start the game with pep in our step, not lag through the second, and then stay strong until the horn sounds in the third.

Who are we? The Wildcats! Who are we gonna beat? The Wildcats!

They’ve got good kids. We’ve got the best kids. Their offense has ginger twins. Our defense has garbage bins. The Canucks and Wings are both expected to perform badly this season. If our Kid Line is flying, and our goaltending is solid, we can poke holes in their defense. Their goaltending was expected to be bad, it hasn’t been, but that doesn’t mean the decline isn’t coming and we can always give that first little push...