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Time: 7:00pm ET
Place: PNC Arena
TV: FSD
Radio: 97.1 FM The Ticket, 1270 AM
Hurricanes blog: Canes Country
For the second game in a row, the Red Wings had an early goal called back and had to fight back from a third period two goal deficit to win in extra hockey on a goal by Dylan Larkin to win 3-2 over the New York Rangers. They will have to recover quickly as they traveled to Carolina immediately after the game to take on a Hurricanes team who beat them 3-1 just a few weeks ago.
Since beating the Red Wings the Hurricanes have had some struggles, winning only two of the seven games. As has been the theme lately for Red Wings opponents, the Hurricanes have relied heavily on a few forwards to do a lot of the heavy offensive lifting for them. Sebastian Aho leads the team in points (4G/14A/18Pts) while Michael Ferland (7G) and Jordan Staal (5G) lead the forwards in goals. Andrei Svechnikov, the second overall pick in the past draft, has four goals and six points on the season. While Carolina is still a little thin at times up front, they are quite deep along the blue line with the likes of Calvin de Haan, Dougie Hamilton, Justin Faulk, Haydn Fleury, Jaccob Slavin, Trevor van Riemsdyk and Brett Pesce making up possibly the best blue line group outside of Nashville. They are very good at controlling the puck, moving it up the ice and working the offensive zone and the Red Wings will have their hands full with this group. In net it has been a bit of a “by committee” as Curtis McElhinney(5), Scott Darling(3) and Petr Mrazek(8) have all logged time 16 games into the season with not great results. Darling leads the trio with a .904 save percentage, the other two are .884 and .880 respectively. That is less than ideal goaltending and definitely a weakness the Red Wings need to take advantage of if they are to walk away with two points tonight.
On the Red Wings front, it seems they just cannot get 100% healthy. They finally get Frans Nielsen and Andreas Athanasiou back last night, only to lose Jacob de la Rose to an upper body injury. No words yet on how long he will be out or how the lines will shake out as a result.
The Red Wings played arguably their best game of the season last night. They were flying around the ice, aggressively attacking the puck and looking to make plays. Hopefully they will be able to put in the same kind of effort tonight against a Hurricanes team that has struggled with consistency but are filled with talent, especially along their blue line.