Welcome back. I’m glad you found the place. I’m beginning to think the NHL is afraid the Wings are going to fall apart due to their age, so they have given them an AHL schedule where they only play close to the weekend. The Wings are back at it again tonight where they take on the Coyotes (as an aside, in back to back games the Wings have played the Ducks and Coyotes. If there were some sort of rooster-based team, I’d swear the NHL was trying to turn us all into Bugs Bunny fans), a team that is struggling to find some sort of consistency this season. You may remember that these teams met what seems like 5 years ago, with the Wings emerging victorious after spending an entire OT period on the power play. The last time the Wings were off for this long, it took them a while to get their legs under them. Here’s hoping they are able to get off to a good start.
The big news out of Red Wing camp is obviously that Jimmy Howard experienced some back spasms and will not dress for tonight’s game as a precaution. Chris Osgood gets the start, and love him or hate him, he’s our goalie. When questioned about the potential cause of the injury, Tyler from TTD informed us that Jimmy is pretty sure he knows how he hurt himself. The other main Red Wing news is that Mike Babcock has effectively put the third line on notice that he is expecting more out of them, so it will be interesting to see how they respond. Here are the projected lineups for both teams tonight.
Datsyuk-Zetterberg-Holmstrom
Franzen-Filppula-Bertuzzi
Hudler-Modano-Cleary
Miller-Helm-Eaves
Lidstrom-Stuart
Kronwall-Janik
Kindl-Salei
Osgood
Ray Whitney-Eric Belanger-Shane Doan
Taylor Pyatt-Vernon Fiddler-Lee Stempniak
Lauri Korpikoski-Andrew Ebbett-Radim Vrbata
Ed Jovanovski-Sami Lepisto
Keith Yandle, Derek Morris
Adrian Aucoin-Oliver Ekman-Larsson
Ilya Bryzgalov (expected to start)
Jason LaBarbera
Join us in the game thread as we dissect Mr Osgood’s performance and decide whether or not we need to get our pitchforks and torches ready to get him out of town.
