Morning Skate: Red Wings at Blue Jackets
7:00p ET, Nationwide Arena
Columbus, OH
TV: Fox Sports Detroit
Radio: 97.1 The Ticket/1270 AM
Jacket's Blog: The Cannon
Ooooooooo boy... is this game going to be inteeerrrresting.
We know what happened to the Red Wings against the Blackhawks. They go outscored 9-3 and dropped two games to arguably the best team in the Western Conference. The Wings are not on Chicago's level. The Wings are barely a playoff team right now in the Eastern Conference and things are getting damn tight in the standings. The Flyers are winning and find themselves only two points back (both teams with 65 games played).
So what does that all mean for tonight? There are two massive points on the line in Columbus. The Blue Jackets are not a good hockey team. The Red Wings are an average hockey team. They should beat the Jackets. But will they? Who the hell knows.
The Wings need to score goals. The Jackets still not having Sergei Bobrovsky should help somewhat.
The Wings need to stop the other team from scoring goals. The Jackets not having Brandon Saad or Jack Johnson should help somewhat.
Jimmy Howard gets the starts... and we're all probably weirdly okay with it and -- dare I say -- confident about it. We've come a long way since Petr Mrazek was winning games all by himself. Now he can't seem to stop a beach ball. Howard as been solid. The Wings need him tonight more than any other game they've played all season.
Shit is about to get real.
Detroit Expected Lineup
Forwards
| Henrik Zetterberg | Pavel Datsyuk | Justin Abdelkader |
| Gus Nyquist | Riley Sheahan | Tomas Tatar |
| Dylan Larkin | Andreas Athanasiou | Brad Richards |
| Darren Helm | Luke Glendening | Tomas Jurco |
Defensemen
| Kyle Quincey | Mike Green |
| Danny DeKeyser | Alexey Marchenko |
| Niklas Kronwall | Jonathan Ericsson |
Goaltenders
| Jimmy Howard |
| Petr Mrazek |
Scratches: Teemu Pulkkinen, Brendan Smith :(
Injuries: Drew Miller, Johan Franzen
Columbus Expected Lineup
Forwards
| Nick Foligno | Alexander Wennberg | Scott Hartnell |
| Boone Jenner | Brandon Dubinsky | Cam Atkinson |
| Matt Calvert | William Karlsson | Rene Bourque |
| David Clarkson | Gregory Campbell | Jared Boll |
Defensemen
| Ryan Murray | Seth Jones |
| Cody Goloubef | David Savard |
| Fedor Tyutin | Dalton Prout |
Goaltenders
| Joonas Korpisalo |
| Curtis McElhinney |
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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.