Morning Skate: Detroit Red Wings vs Minnesota Wild
7:30p ET, Joe Louis Arena
Detroit, MI
TV: Fox Sports Detroit
Radio: 97.1 The Ticket
Minnesota Wild Blog: Hockey Wilderness
Good morning! Hope you have all recovered from a great weekend of hockey. This is our last game for an entire week, so savor the moment. I, for one, look forward to watching the NHL's best hockey players wear the NHL's ugliest sweater of all time. Let's be honest, it's a great thing that Detroit doesn't have any players in the ASG. The team gets to rest, go on vacation, and come back fresh and ready to break into the home stretch of the season. I'm looking for a big game from Tomas Tatar, who has been on fire as of late with eight points (five goals, three assists) in the past five games.
Tonight we see the Minnesota Wild, a team who has been going through some very serious punches as of late. They're coming off of a two-game winning streak, but those wins were against the Coyotes and the Sabres. They went out and added Devan Dubnyk to their goaltending core, and he has had a couple of good outings for them so far. I assume Detroit will see Dubnyk in net tonight. I think it's pretty fitting that their name is the "Wild" considering that they've never played a hockey game out in the wilderness. BOOYAH!
So here we go.. State of Hockey vs Hockeytown. Let's do it, gang!
The Expected Lineups
Forwards
| Gustav Nyquist | Henrik Zetterberg | Justin Abdelkader |
| Darren Helm | Pavel Datsyuk | Tomas Tatar |
| Stephen Weiss | Joakim Andersson | Teemu Pulkkinen |
| Drew Miller | Riley Sheahan | Luke Glendening |
Defensemen
| Niklas Kronwall | Jonathan Ericsson |
| Danny DeKeyser | Kyle Quincey |
| Xavier Ouellet | Brendan Smith |
Goaltenders
| Petr Mrazek (starting) |
| Thomas McCollum |
Scratches: Brian Lashoff & Daniel Cleary
Injuries: Johan Franzen (headaches), Tomas Jurco (back), Jakub Kindl (not good at sports), Jimmy Howard (groin) & Jonas Gustavsson (shoulder)
Forwards
| Zach Parise | Mikko Koivu | Jason Pominville |
| Jason Zucker | Erik Haula | Thomas Vanek |
| Ryan Carter | Charlie Coyle | Nino Niederreiter |
| Matt Cooke | Kyle Brodziak | Justin Fontaine |
Defensemen
| Ryan Suter | Jonas Brodin |
| Jared Spurgeon | Matthew Dumba |
| Marco Scandella | Christian Folin |
Goaltenders
| Devan Dubnyk (starting) |
| Nicklas Backstrom |
| WILD | THE MATCH-UP | RED WINGS |
| 20-19-5 (45 pts; Last in Central) | Record | 26-11-9 (61 pts; 2nd in Atlantic) |
| 2.75 (15th in NHL) | Goals Per Game | 2.89 (11th in NHL) |
| 2.91 (23rd) | Goals Against Per Game | 2.35 (4th) |
| 14.7% (26th) | Power Play % | 25.2% (2nd) |
| 84.3% (8th) | Penalty Kill % | 85.4% (5th) |
| Zach Parise (16 goals) | Goal Leader | Tomas Tatar (21 goals) |
| Jason Pominville (36 points) | Points Leader | Henrik Zetterberg (41 points) |
- The Red Wings are 31-15-3 (W-L-OTL) all-time in the regular season against the Minnesota Wild.
- Last 10 Games: Minnesota 3-7-0, Detroit 7-3-0/
- Here is a graph to show you why Minnesota has trended downwards as of late (Data pulled from 2007-2015):
