With the main scrimmages all in the books and the return of the juniors players to their CHL teams, we finally get to preseason games this week. Detroit will play four times over the next week. Here’s the schedule.
| Date | Time | Opponent | Television |
| Mon 9/22 | 7pm | @Pittsburgh | WPCW (Pittsburgh) |
| Tue 9/23 | 8:30pm | @Chicago | CSN-CH+ (Chicago) |
| Thu 9/25 | 7:30pm | vs Chicago | None |
| Sat 9/27 | 7pm | vs Boston | None |
As of right now, there are no plans to televise any of this week’s four games in Detroit. If you live in Pittsburgh or Chicago, you can watch Monday’s or Tuesday’s game though. These will be split-squad games for the Wings, as they’re sending half of their crew to each city. Here’s Monday’s tentative lineup from Kyle.
Here is your tentative lineup for tomorrow’s exhibition against Pittsburgh. pic.twitter.com/OnzLndMuOo
— Kyle (@KyleWIIM) September 21, 2014
That’s all four of the young D-Men vying for a spot playing in the same game, which should be a lot of fun to watch (not to mention the Tatar-Datsyuk-Helm line). Babs says that Howard will play the first two periods with Mrazek taking the third as well, which will be the same setup on Tuesday except that Gustavsson will be the starter against Pittsburgh.
It’s annoying that we can’t watch the early preseason stuff to get first looks at at least somewhat competitive hockey for the first time in too many months (outside of actually going to the games… which I’d like to do except it’s kind of a long drive for me). For what it’s worth, all of next week’s games will be televised either on Fox Sports Detroit or on NHLN. By then, roster decisions should be getting a bit harder. If I can find a way to watch, I’m very interested to see how guys on or near the bubble perform. Jurco, Cleary, Andersson, Callahan, Ferraro, and Glendening will all be under close scrutiny and these next two weeks will say a lot about which of them are on the team come October 9th.
