Time: 7:00pm ET

Place: Little Caesars Arena - Detroit,MI

TV: FSD, ESPN+

Radio: 97.1 FM The Ticket, 1270 AM

Hurricanes Blog: Canes Country

The beat goes on for Detroit. Despite being at or near the league “lead” in games played most of the season so far and having just come off a three game west coast swing last week the Red Wings return to The Dough Joe tonight for their third game in four days. The Red Wings will look to continue their bizarre trend of playing the good teams well and the bad teams, well, bad as they welcome the Carolina Hurricanes to town for what is hopefully a better game than the last one these two teams played. Coming off of an impressive 3-1 win against Edmonton where the Wings did a fantastic job of shutting down Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl for the majority of the game, the Red Wings headed down to Carolina at the beginning of November to look to build off of the defensive effort they showed against the Oilers. What they built instead was concern and frustrations as they lost 7-3 to the Hurricanes to begin a four game stretch where they were outscored 22-5. Flash forward to the end of the month and the Red Wings will look to give a better showing tonight in front of the home crowd as they start a week of hockey that will see them take on the struggling but talented Toronto Maple Leafs (now with no Mike Babcock), a much improved Philadelphia Flyers and the league leading Washington Capitals. For a rebuilding team that was expected by just about everyone to finish in or near the basement it is hard to say any week is a “must win week” or even any game is a “must win game”. For Detroit though, this week is very important if for nothing else, their confidence. Another bad stretch of games like the last one they had when they played the Hurricanes would put them almost double their point total out of a Wild Card spot. While no one saw they actually competing for a spot this year, being double their point total out of a spot by the end of November could be tough for some of the young core of the team to deal with and could even cost the coaching staff the locker room. So it all starts tonight with the Hurricanes, who come in holding the first Wild Card spot thanks to a potent offense and a pretty stingy defense.

Offensively they are lead by players all over the ice. Young Andrei Svechnikov (10G, 14A) leads them in points with Dougie Hamilton (9G, 14A) and Teuvo Teravainen (6G, 15A). Sebastian Aho (11G, 6A) leads the team in goals scored with the aforementioned Svechnikov and Hamilton right behind along with Eric Haula (8G, 3A). Defensively their blue line is one of the best in the league with the likes of Hamilton, Jacob Slavin, Brett Pesce, Hayden Fleury and Jake Gardiner back there. Former Red Wing Petr Mrazek has done well holding down the lion’s share of games in net for the Hurricanes despite only a .902 save percentage, with James Reimer putting up similar numbers as his backup.

The Hurricanes are in a lot of ways what we hope the Red Wings can become in time. They play fast, are fun to watch, score a lot of goals and are loaded with a lot of young talent that should keep them in the playoffs for the foreseeable future until the inevitable cap monster comes to collect. This will be another good test for the young Red Wings and hopefully not another reminder of how far they still have to go.