Morning Skate: Lightning at Red Wings

Game 74

Jeff Hancock

• 2 min read Game Preview

2p ET, Joe Loius Arena

Detroit, MI

TV: Fox Sports Detroit

Radio: 97.1 The Ticket

Ligtning Blog: Raw Charge

Here we go again with this one.

Tampa owns us. At the very least, they've pretty much owned us since we moved to the Eastern Conference last season. To be fair though, everyone seems to own the Red Wings these days. It must be getting pretty crowded up in Ilitch's suite. But hey, let's now dwell on the negative here. We should look at the positive. History repeats itself, right? Last season, Detroit and Tampa played 5 times total. The Lightning owned the Red Wings and won the first four games, but the final matchup of the season was at the Joe in late March on a weekend afternoon. The Red Wings were victorious in that affair.

Fast forward to this season... Detroit and Tampa play 4 times total. The Lightning owned the Red Wings and won the first three games, but the final matchup of the season is at the Joe in late March on a weekend afternoon. History always repeats itself. Always. There is no exception with this rule. If I was a betting man (which I'm not), I'd put my money on the Wings to win this game 3-2 with goals from Joakim Andersson, Gustav Nyquist and, finally, David Legwand Stephen Weiss on the power play.

One more happy note, Pavel Datsyuk took line rushes in practice yesterday. That makes me think he's going to give it a go today. Although nothing is official. Let's sure as hell hope he goes because Riley Sheahan did not practice yesterday and is out for this game with some upper body nonsense. If neither guy goes, we're looking at some serious issues down the middle and the return of Daniel Cleary. So let's all keep our fingers crossed.

The Expected Lineups (Subject to Change)

Forwards

Gustav Nyquist Henrik Zetterberg Justin Abdelkader
Darren Helm Pavel Datsyuk Tomas Tatar
Stephan Weiss Joakim Andersson Teemu Pulkkinen
Drew Miller Luke Glendening Tomas Jurco

Defensemen

Niklas Kronwall Jonathan Ericsson
Kyle Quincey Danny DeKeyser
Brendan Smith Marek Zidlicky

Goaltenders

Jimmy Howard (charting)
Petr Mrazek (starting)


Scratches: Daniel Cleary & Jakub Kindl

Injuries: Riley Sheahan (upper body) & Johan Franzen (concussion)

Forwards

Jonathan Drouin Steven Stamkos Alex Killorn
Ondrej Palat Tyler Johnson Nikita Kucherov
Cedric Paquetter Valtteri Filppula Ryan Callahan
Brendan Morrow Brian Boyle J.T. Brown


Defensemen

Victor Hedman Anton Stralman
Matt Carle Jason Garrison
Mark Barberio Andrej Sustr


Goaltenders

Ben Bishop
Andrei Vasilevskiy


LIGHTNING THE MATCH-UP RED WINGS
46-22-7 (99 pts; 2nd in Atlantic) Record 39-22-12 (90 pts; 3rd in Atlantic)
3.23 (1st in NHL) Goals Per Game 2.86 (7th in NHL)
2.52 (12th) Goals Against Per Game 2.63 (17th)
18.1% (18th) Power Play % 24.5% (2nd)
83.2% (9th) Penalty Kill % 81.0% (18th)
Steven Stamkos (40 goals) Goal Leader Tomas Tatar (26 goals)
Johnson & Stamkos tied with 67 points Points Leader Henrik Zetterberg (61 points)

  • The Red Wings are 26-9-2-3 (W-L-T-OTL) all-time in the regular season against the Tampa Bay Lightning./

  • Last 10 Games: Tampa 7-2-1, Detroit 3-6-1 (that's bad)/

Let's Go Red Wings.