[J.J. here for this part before we get to Edubs’ key matchups] With the game taking place early in the afternoon, we’re short on updates, but I wanted to remind you that Prashanth and I will be at the game and then doing a WIIM Meetup at HopCat afterward. Come find me on the concourse of the LCA. I’ll be the random guy in an old Shanahan jersey.

Projected Lineups

Detroit Red Wings

Gustav Nyquist - Henrik Zetterberg - Justin Abdelkader

Tomas Tatar - Dylan Larkin - Anthony Mantha

Darren Helm - Frans Nielsen - Luke Glendening

Andreas Athanasiou - Martin Frk – Tyler Bertuzzi

Danny DeKeyser – Mike Green

Jonathan Ericsson – Trevor Daley

Niklas Kronwall – Nick Jensen

Xavier Ouellet

Jimmy Howard

Petr Mrazek

Power Play

PP1 – Nyquist, Zetterberg, Abdelkader, Tatar, Kronwall

PP2 – Athanasiou, Larkin, Mantha, Frk, Green

St. Louis Blues

Vladimir Sobotka – Paul Stastny – Vladimir Tarasenko

Jaden Schwartz – Brayden Schenn – Alex Steen

Magnus Paararvi – Patrik Bergland – Dimitrij Jaskin

Scottie Upshall – Kyle Brodziak – Chris Thorburn

Jay Bouwmeester – Alex Pietrangelo

Joel Edmundson – Colton Parayko

Vince Dunn – Carl Gunnarsson

Jake Allen

Carter Hutton

Power Play

PP1 – Schwartz, Schenn, Tarasenko, Steen, Pietrangelo

PP2 – Sobotka, Stastny, Berglund, Parayko, Dunn

Keys to the Game

Keep the Energy Up

As several players and the coach has said recently, this is not a team that can win games with anything but their A game. That means staying aggressive everywhere, outworking teams along the boards and using their speed to their advantage. If they want to win today they need to find a way to stay engaged.

Get to the Net

St. Louis is a very good team that is solid from the top to the bottom. This is not a team that is going to give the puck away a ton and allow the Red Wings a ton of grade A opportunities. This means they are going to have battle to the front of the net, dig for rebounds and look for some of those “greasy goals”. Fortunately they have a handful of players that have shown a penchant for finding those kinds of goals at times (guys like Tatar, Abdelkader, Mantha, Nyquist) and they just added a player on a call up who loves finding those goals.

Keep It Simple and Smart In Their End

While the Blues are not likely to beat themselves the same cannot be said about the Red Wings. They have been better most of the year than in the last couple years they still find themselves prone to the unforced turnover in their own zone or the poor defensive positioning ending up in them fishing the puck out of their own net. You cannot make those kinds of mistakes against a team rolling like St. Louis and expect to win.