Morning Skate: Red Wings at Senators
7:30p ET, Canadian Tire Centre
Ottawa, ON
TV: FS-D
Radio: 97.1 The Ticket/1270 AM
Sens Blog: Silver Seven
It's another trip to Ottawa for the Red Wings. Let's hope this visit is just as successful as the last time these two teams met up in Canada's capital city. These two teams played a home-and-home back-to-back late last month. The Wings lost at the Joe in an ugly performance, but bounced back nicely the next night for a Halloween win. The final score was 5-3, but it wasn't as close as the score indicates.
The Sens have lost 3 of their last 4 games. Most recently they fell 2-1 in a shootout to the Rangers on Saturday night. Meanwhile, the Red Wings got it handed to them by the Bruins because of course they did. The Wings badly need a win tonight to keep pace in the Atlantic. Right now Detroit sits out of the playoffs with 17 points. Ottawa is 2nd in the division with 20 points. Both teams have played 17 games. There is still a whole hell of a lot of hockey left to be played, but digging a deep hole now will just hurt this team in the long run.
The lines are still to be determined. It'll be interesting to see if Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg remain apart or if Jeff Blashill puts them back together. Teemu Pulkkinen is feeling better after missing last game due to some soreness (or conspiracy theory: he was benched for diving). Brendan Smith is out due to illness so the defense should remain the same. We'll have updated lines after the morning skate.
Detroit's Expected Lineup
Forwards
Justin Abdelkader | Henrik Zetterberg | Dylan Larkin |
Darren Helm | Pavel Dastyuk | Tomas Tatar |
Gustav Nquist | Andreas Athanasiou | Teemu Pulkkinen |
Drew Miller | Luke Glendening | Riley Sheahan |
Defensemen
Niklas Kronwall | Mike Green |
Danny DeKeyser | Jonathan Ericsson |
Jakub Kindl | Alexey Marchenko |
Goaltenders
Jimmy Howard |
Petr Mrazek |
Scratches: Brendan Smith (ill), Tomas Jurco (must've kicked Blashill's dog)
Injuries: Kyle Quincey, Brad Richards, Johan Franzen, Landon Ferraro
Ottawa's Expected Lineup
Forwards
Mike Hoffman | Kyle Turris | Mark Stone |
Matt Puempel | Mika Zibanejad | Bobby Ryan |
Milan Michalek | Jean-Gabriel Pageau | Alex Chiasson |
Curtis Lazar | Zack Smith | Chris Neil |
Defensemen
Marc Methot | Erik Karlsson |
Patrick Wiercioch | Cody Ceci |
Mark Borowiecki | Chris Wideman |
Goaltenders
Craig Anderson |
Matt O'Connor |
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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.