Morning Skate: Senators at Red Wings
7p ET, Joe Louis Arena
Detroit, MI
TV: Fox Sports Detroit
Radio: 97.1 The Ticket/1270 AM
Sens Blog: Silver Seven
After an ugly back-to-back in the state of Florida, the Red Wings seems to have gotten back on track in their last two games. Two regulation wins by a combined score of 8-1. A big part of the new found success? Well, I'd like to think that it's because we're oh so close to legitimately playing the best players. We're just about there with the forwards thanks to the call up of Andreas Athanasiou. He's an NHL hockey player. The debate now comes down to Luke Glendening vs Teemu Pulkkinen. Right now, Glendening gets the nod. So be it. I'll take what we've got over Joakim Andersson being in the lineup.
On the blueline, Jakub Kindl is still here and playing because Mike Green spent too much time with Piet Van Zant. Surprised they didn't just call it a "lower body" injury after our groin groans the past few seasons. That's besides the point though... while we're close to the best 12 forwards skating, we're not as close on the best six defenseman skating. Part of that is injury related (e.g. Green, Niklas Kronwall). Part of that is bad lineup/roster decisions (e.g. Jonathan Ericsson). The Wings are slooooooooowly moving in the right direction. Let's see that continue tonight against newly acquired Dion Phaneuf and his Ottawa Senators.
Oh yeah, Petr Mrazek... f*ck yeah man. He's good.
Detroit Expected Lineup
Forwards
Henrik Zetterberg | Pavel Datsyuk | Justin Abdelkader |
Tomas Tatar | Dylan Larkin | Brad Richards |
Gus Nyquist | Andreas Athanasiou | Tomas Jurco |
Darren Helm | Riley Sheahan | Luke Glendening |
Defensemen
Kyle Quincey | Danny DeKeyser |
Brendan Smith | Jakub Kindl |
Jonathan Ericsson | Alexey Marchenko |
Goaltenders
Petr Mrazek |
Jimmy Howard |
Scratches: Joakim Andersson
Injuries: Drew Miller, Johan Franzen, Niklas Kronwall, Mike Green
Ottawa Expected Lineup
Forwards
Mike Hoffman | Kyle Turris | Bobby Ryan |
Zack Smith | Jean-Gabriel Pageau | Mark Stone |
Shane Prince | Mika Zibanejad | Alex Chiasson |
Ryan Dzingel | Curtis Lazar | Chris Neil |
Defensemen
Marc Methot | Erik Karlsson |
Dion Phaneuf | Cody Ceci |
Patrick Wiercioch | Mark Borowiecki |
Goaltenders
Craig Anderson |
Andrew Hammond |
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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.