Five game losing streak. Between us, the deep diggers, the other faithful Red Wings bloggers, and our readers here at WIIM. We’ve killed this topic to death. There’s just one thing left to to do.
JUST WIN, BABY!
Matchsticks and Gasoline is your SBNation Flames’ blog.
Puck drop is just after 7:30p ET
The Expected Lineup
Jiri Hudler — Pavel Datsyuk — Danny Cleary
Johan Franzen — Henrik Zetterberg — Todd Bertuzzi
Valtteri Filppula — Darren Helm — Justin Abdelkader
Drew Miller — Cory Emmerton — Tomas Holmstrom
Mike Commodore — Jonathan Ericsson
Jimmy Howard (starting)
After taking a hit from Mikko Koivu on Tuesday, Kronner practiced and is good-to-go tonight. Eaves didn’t practice yesterday. Babcock said it was a maintenance day. I’d like to see Eaves in the lineup and Miller too. Outside of his dumb penalty, I thought Miller had a nice game against the Wild. The Eurotwins are broken up in another effort to try to kick start the lifeless offense. I’m curious to watch the third line tonight. I like the idea of adding a skill guy in Flip to the speed and energy of Helm and Abby. All in all, I hope these lines click, or at the very least one of the lines click and gets hot so we don’t have the endless line juggling and goal scoring droughts. We need a win. Just win, baby! UPDATE: Kindl is a healthy scratch, Commie makes his Red Wings debut, and Eaves is unavailable due to a bum back.
Scratches: Jakub Kindl
Injuries: Jan Mursak (ankle), Patrick Eaves (back)
| FLAMES | HOW THEY MATCH UP | RED WINGS |
| 4-5-1 | Record | 5-4-1 |
| 2.30 (T-24th) | Goals Per Game | 2.30 (T-24th) |
| 2.80 (T-21st) | Goals Against Per Game | 2.50 (10th) |
| 13.5% (23rd) | Power Play % | 14.3% (T-21st) |
| 81.6% (20th) | Penalty Kill % | 80.5% (21st) |
| Rene Bourque (5 goals) | Goal Leader | Johan Franzen (4 goals) |
| Alex Tanguay (9 points) | Points Leader | Pavel Datsyuk (8 points) |
- The Red Wings are 66-60-16-1 (W-L-T-OTL) all-time against the Calgary Flames.
- I find it pretty interesting how close the Red Wings are Flames are in all of the above categories. Just goes to show how bad the Wings are struggling offensively right now. I’m slightly pleased with the 10th ranked goal against though for Detroit. If that can stay in the top ten all year long, I’d be very happy.
- The last time the Wings lost six straight games? Well, you have to go back to the Stanley Cup championship season of 2008. Detroit lost six-in-a-row from February 7th through the 17th. If that team was on the wrong end of a streak, maybe this team can recover too?
- The Flames have lost three of their last five games, including their last game, a 5-1 loss at home to the Canucks.
- Calgary netminder Mikka Kiprusoff has a 10-12-4 (W-L-T/OTL) career record against Detroit with a 2.86 GAA and a .909 SV%. He has 2 shutouts.
- Detroit swept the season series against the Flames last year. They won two games in regulation, one in overtime and one in a shootout.
Prediction: This streak has to end sometime right? Right??? It has to end and it has to end tonight. The Red Wings finally win a game. They take it 4-1 and Pavel Datsyuk is your player of the game.
Let’s Go Red Wings. Just Win, Baby!
