Gameday Updates: Senators at Red Wings

Daniel Alfredsson’s not playing tonight, so we lose all those fun narratives about–*gets trampled on by the readers.

Red Wings

• In case you missed the good news, Gustav Nyquist is here to stay! This is not a drill: Gustav Nyquist will be staying up in the big leagues for the rest of the season.
• Jimmy Howard is your confirmed starter for tonight’s game. I hope no one told Nyquist that the Red Wings aren’t allowed to support him backstopping the team to a win.
• The lineup from Jeff’s Morning Skate aka the lineup from the win against the Hurricanes is all set to go tonight. Except it’s Dan Cleary in place of the Corpse and Mikael Samuelsson in place of the Crap.
• Speaking of Mr. Cleary, he gave probably the most hockey player answer to a question about his confidence:
  

  3/3. asked to assess his confidence, good or bad, cleary said, “about in the middle.”

  — gregg krupa (@greggkrupa) November 23, 2013

  As much as we I rag on Cleary, his confidence can’t be riding high after the team’s recent losing skid at home and after his recent play helping absolutely no one (except his detractors). A good Cleary makes for a good Red Wings team as much as a good Samuelsson does. WOOHOO GO CLEARY! GO SAMMY!

• Finally, the latest news I can give you on our injured offseason is that Stephen Weiss and Alfredsson will play at some point this week. You may now continue your Nyquist-included rosterbation.

Senators

• The Senators aren’t exactly in good spirits. They’ve lost three in a row, giving up at least 4 goals in each game. Senators GM Bryan Murray “has aggressively been working the phones,” so I hope we can give him more reason to panic.
• Robin Lehner will get the start for the Senators tonight. Hopefully we give him the same treatment Ottawa gave our goalies last time.
• For the rest of the Senators’ lineup, Paul “The ‘Stache” MacLean used one of Babcock’s old tricks: the line blender:

Boy, am I glad I don’t have the play-by-play duties and have to fumble Zibanejad, Wiercioch, and Borowiecki’s names. Also, I never thought I would see a world where Jason Spezza is not the first-line center on his NHL team in his prime.

But who cares? It’s payback time.

LET’S GO RED WINGS!!!