Morning Skate: Blue Jackets at Red Wings
7:30p ET, Joe Louis Arena
Detroit, MI
TV: Fox Sports Detroit, NBCSN
Radio: 97.1 The Ticket/1270 AM
Jacket's Blog: The Cannon
One last game here until the Stadium Series takes up our weekend. The Red Wings get to host the Blue Jackets at the Joe. Columbus will be coming to town playing their 2nd game in as many days. Last night, they went into the Boston and beat the Bruins 6-4... so thank you for that, CBJ. Tonight though... we hope you suck.
The Wings blueline is expected to see the return of Niklas Kronwall tonight. We'll see how the pairings and defense as a whole shapes up. I'd expect Kronwall to slide in on the left side next to Alexey Marchenko or he'll join Danny DeKeyser as the "top pair." Kyle Quincey would then move down next to Marchenko. Jeff Blashill could just shake up all the pairs too. We'll know more after the Wings skate.
Ultimately, the Red Wings are losers of four straight games and, if they can't win tonight, the slide down the standings could continue. This team can't afford to waste points against a bad team playing the 2nd game of a back-to-back. A loss tonight is completely unacceptable.
Detroit Expected Lineup
Forwards
| Henrik Zetterberg | Pavel Datsyuk | Justin Abdelkader |
| Tomas Tatar | Brad Richards | Dylan Larkin |
| Gus Nyquist | Andreas Athanasiou | Tomas Jurco |
| Darren Helm | Riley Sheahan | Luke Glendening |
Defensemen
| Kyle Quincey | Danny DeKeyser |
| Nicklas Kronwall | Alexey Marchenko |
| Brendan Smith | Mike Green |
Goaltenders
| Petr Mrazek |
| Jimmy Howard |
Scratches: Teemu Pulkkinen, Jakub Kindl
Injuries: Drew Miller, Johan Franzen, Jonathan Ericsson
Columbus Expected Lineup
Forwards
| Scott Hartnell | Alexander Wennberg | Brandon Saad |
| Boone Jenner | Brandon Dubinsky | Cam Atkinson |
| Matt Calvert | William Karlsson | Nick Foligno |
| Kerby Rychel | Gregory Campbell | Rene Bourque |
Defensemen
| Ryan Murray | Seth Jones |
| Jack Johnson | David Savard |
| Fedor Tyutin | Dalton Prout |
Goaltenders
| Curtis McElhinney |
| Joonas Korpisalo |
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Game Day Prediction Contest
Would you like to predict the outcome of the game and potentially become internet famous? Well you're in luck, because here's your opportunity. Here's how it works.
Make your game predictions on the winning team, final score, and who the Wings player of the game will be. Enter the required information into the form below using the formats indicated in the questions. If you don't use those formats, your answers will be disregarded. All submissions are timestamped and will be accepted only until the official game start time. All other submissions after that will be disregarded. Only one submission per person, please. POTG will be determined by the collective of WiiM writers.
Each correct winning team prediction is worth 1 point. Each correct player of the game prediction is worth 2 points. Each correct final score prediction is worth 5 points. If you get all three correct you'll receive 15 points.