Red Wings
- Starting from the crease on out, Jimmy Howard gets the start tonight, with Petr Mrazek backing him up. Red Wings goal-creator Jonas Gustavsson skated as the third goalie in the morning skate, but he’s not yet ready to return from a groin injury.
- The even strength lineup is as Jeff had it in the Morning Skate. In keeping with the long-standing tradition of using forwards at the point on the power play, Teemu Pulkkinen played the left point with DeKeyser on the second power play unit at practice yesterday.
- Oh yeah. In case you hadn’t heard (how you didn’t, I don’t know), Teemu Pulkkinen was called up to take the injured Tomas Jurco’s spot the lineup. He’ll be starting on the fourth line, and with the inevitable line-juggling who knows how he’ll look or where he’ll end up.
- Speaking of Jurco, he’ll be out a month with a broken rib. We won’t be hearing from him for while, unfortunately.
- Darren Helm skated this morning, and hopes to be back in the lineup at some point next week. Video here on coming back from a concussion.
- No updates on Pavel Datsyuk and Stephen Weiss as they haven’t been skating with the team. Datsyuk had been shut down by the team for 3 weeks going back to March 5. With a little over a week since then, don’t expect much Datsyuk news until around the 26th.
- There’s also some waiting to be done on Weiss. Scar tissue from his hernia surgery was apparently causing him pain. The linked tweet is from Wednesday, so don’t wait for more Weiss news until around the 20th.
Oilers
- The Oilers are currently on a 4-game road trip in which they’ve split the first two games. They won a shootout at Minnesota and got demolished in the third period last night against the St. Louis Blues.
- This is a lineup that is currently ahead of only fellow Atlantic Division rival Buffalo in the standings, and by a comfortable margin. I have no idea what to think if they win the lottery and get the first overall pick, again.
- Nothing confirmed as of this writing, but Viktor Fasth is your probable starter for the Oilers tonight.
- Oilers’ projected lineup:
FORWARDS Taylor “horse in the” Hall
Sam “That 8 point game should have been 7” Gagner David “once a Blue, always a Blue” Perron Nail “won’t be celebrating tonight!” Yakupov
Ryan “hyphenated names are overrated” Nugent-Hopkins Jordan “2010 World Junior silver medalist” Eberle Matt “more than one” Hendricks
Boyd “Girld” Gordon Jesse “so much better with the Oilers than Islanders” Joennsu Luke “scored the Oilers’ first goal this season” Gazdic
Ryan “Is he faster than Cleary?” Smyth Ryan Jones DEFENSE Martin “Marmar” Marincin
Jeff “Dish” Petry
Mark “Mar” Fraser
Justin “DeKeyser’s better” Schultz
Oscar “Musical” Klefbom
Andrew “The Captain” Ference GOALTENDING Viktor “That other California swift-named guy” Fasth
Ben “Bartleby, the” Scrivens
What can you really say that hasn’t been said already? This is the second-worst team in the league. You’re desperate for points for a playoff push. Anything less than a win puts you closer to disaster. Play on.
LET’S GO RED WINGS!!!
