Time: 7:30 Eastern
Place: Little Caesar’s Arena
TV: FS Detroit, FS Carolina
Radio: 97.1 FM The Ticket // 1270 AM
Canes’ Blog: Canes Country
Tonight the Wings welcome the Carolina Hurricanes to Detroit. They’ll try to dispatch another Southern foe after putting away Tampa in a shootout on Sunday, but the Canes won’t be coming into Detroit in the middle of the night on the heels of an unfriendly time change. In fact, while the Wings were finally breaking the Lightning Curse, Carolina was thumping the Penguins to the tune of 6-2.
But Carolina has been hot and cold lately as they try to keep themselves in the playoff picture. Fortunately for them, they’ve got at least one game in hand on everyone they’re chasing. They should be motivated to play come puck drop in a way that a lot of other teams are not at this time of year.
Expect the Wings to ice the same lineup as Sunday, because hey, it’s winning games right now. The Canes have been healthy up front but have been hammered on the blue line and in net; Dougie Hamilton, Brett Pesce, and Sami Vatanen are all missing from their defensive corps, and Mrazek and James Reimer are both injured, leaving Anton Nedeljkovic and Anton Forsberg to anchor the Canes. Now that Detroit is relatively healthy, maybe they can exploit some injuries on the other teams’ roster and come away with a three-game winning streak? They’ve only done it once so far this season, with wins over Boston, Vegas, and Anaheim on November 8-12. They’ve only had three other chances to put together a winning streak this season. Maybe tonight’s the night.
