Updates

Red Wings Recall Filip Zadina https://t.co/7T6OZHOTvb

— Winging It In Motown (@wingingitmotown) November 24, 2019

Important to note that with Zadina having played both Friday and Saturday for the Griffins, there’s a good chance he won’t see heavy minutes in Detroit tonight.

Lineups

DETROIT

(Please note, these are from Daily Faceoff, and they are basically guessing. We’ll update if we see actual lines from the team).

Tyler Bertuzzi – Dylan Larkin – Andreas Athanasiou
Robby Fabbri – Valtterri Filppula – Filip Zadina
Brendan Perlini – Frans Nielsen – Taro Hirose
Darren Helm – Luke Glendening – Christoffer Ehn

Patrik Nemeth – Filip Hronek
Jonathan Ericsson – Madison Bowey
Dennis Cholowski – Dylan McIlrath

Jimmy Howard
Jonathan Bernier

CAROLINA

Ryan Dzingel – Jordan Staal – Warren Foegele
Andrei Svechnikov – Sebastian Aho – Tuevo Teravainen
Nino Niedereitter – Lucas Wallmark – Martin Necas
Brock McGinn – Eetu Luostarinen – Jordan Martinook

Jaccob Slavin – Dougie Hamilton
Joel Edmundson – Brett Pesce
Jake Gardiner – Trevor Van Riemsdyk

James Reimer
Petr Mrazek

Keys to the Game

Play Smartly Aggressive

Carolina loves to pressure the opposing team. When they have the puck they push the pace from their talented blue line and make it difficult to defend. On the forecheck they are aggressive and opportunistic, but they can be prone to breakouts. The Red Wings have not been a very good team with the breakouts and as their defensive core has taken some injuries it has been even worse at times. This is not a team to make mistakes on the breakout against, but it is also not a team to try and play low event stall hockey against either. Detroit needs to play smart with the puck in their own end but they cannot try to deaden the puck and play methodical out on the breakout or Carolina’s forecheck will bury them. They have to be smart and quick with their setup and be willing to be aggressive with their stretch passes (as they have at times this season) so they can use their speed to break against a Carolina blue line that is agile but not overly speedy.

Special Teams

There is almost always a blurb about Special Teams in every “Keys to the Game” and this one will be no different. What is different is that the key is Detroit keeping this game to 5 vs 5 hockey as much as possible. Carolina has a top eight Power Play and Penalty Kill, Detroit is bottom seven for both (with a PK that is second to worst in the league). This is not a team to try and get special with as that plays right into their hands.

Solid Blue Line Play

Detroit has had anything but this season. Their blue line has been a bit of a mess from the get-go with injuries making things only worse. They are prone to missed assignments, awful turnovers and poor decision making as a whole. This even includes budding top pair stud Filip Hronek who continues to push his ceiling higher and higher but is still prone to the occasional whoopsie in his own end (at least partially due to the revolving door of pairing partners he has had so far). As already discussed, Carolina thrives off of creating chaos and capitalizing on mistakes. If they are going to have a shot tonight, the Red Wings have got to play a rock solid game from the back end.