7:00p ET, Madison Square Garden
New York, NY
TV: FSD, TVAS, CITY
Radio: 97.1 FM The Ticket // 1270 AM CBS Sports Radio
Rangers Blog: Blueshirt Banter
Understatement: the Red Wings road trip is not going well. After playing a period and a half of boring hockey against the Sens, the Wings were able to take advantage of some defensive misplays and then promptly fell back asleep but still managed to scrape a point. The past two weeks or so the Wings have played with all the intensity of cold oatmeal and need to find some consistent energy, urgently. Tonight we take on the Rangers who have been having a pretty good month, so they’ll be looking to keep on rolling with a win at home.
Overall record:
263-212-103-3 (W-L-T-OL)
A historical moment:
In January of 1944, the Red Wings and Rangers clashed at the Olympia. The Red Wings would score 15 consecutive goals to obliterate the Rangers 15-0. Syd Howe scored a hat trick, with all three goals coming in the final 8 minutes. Including Syd, 10 players contributed goals. It was a disastrous year for a Rangers team that was heavily depleted as a result of World War II, things were so bad that the Rangers had actually asked to suspend operations but were denied.
Know the enemy:
The Rangers offense is lead by Mats Zuccarello, Derick Brassard, and J.T. Miller. The Rangers powerplay? Terrible. Yes, even worse than the Red Wings. The only thing worse than their powerplay is their penalty killing, so tonight would be the perfect night for the Red Wings powerplay to make some noise. However, the Rangers do typically score a lot of goals so the Wings should aspire to score at least four times.
The Coaching match-up:
Jeff Blashill will be matching wits with Alain Vigneault, who you may recall was hired by the Rangers to replace John Tortorella. Oddly enough, Torts was then hired by the Canucks to replace Vigneault. Coach fact: Last year, Alain Vigneault made a snarky comment about Yoenis Cespedes and is therefore dead to me. I don’t know AV’s favorite color, but it’s probably beige.
Closing thoughts:
The Wings certainly missed Dylan Larkin, let’s hope he is feeling better and ready to go. The defense will have their work cut out for them tonight, and a bright spot on the defense has been Kyle Quincey (yes, Quincey). He, his majestic beard, and Danny DeKeyser have been holding down the fort while we await the return of Niklas Kronwall and Jonathan Ericsson, who if paired together will cause the implosion of the entire universe so don’t even think about it Blash. Pavel Datsyuk and Andreas Athanasiou seem to be interested in playing some hockey, anyone else want to chip in? Remember how we once scored 15 goals against the Rangers? Wouldn’t it be fun to do that again?
LET’S GO RED WINGS!
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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.
