Morning Skate: Predators at Red Wings
8:00 PM ET, Xcel Energy Center
St. Paul, Minnesota
TV: Fox Sports Detroit
Radio: 97.1 The Ticket
Wild Blog: Hockey Wilderness
Hello. Welcome back. I hope that you had a wonderful holiday break, ate a lot of food, and drank some tasty beverages. Hopefully Uncle Tom didn't get you too drunk last night, because we have a hockey game to play. Well, not us. The Red Wings do, but we have to watch. Actually, you don't have to watch. That's really up to you. Anyways...
I am still trying to shake off the last loss, where Detroit gave up three unanswered goals in the first period against the Devils. Tonight the Wings draw the Nashville Predators. A team who, in my opinion, are pretty much exactly like Detroit, just flip-flopped. Where Detroit has depth, and scoring talent up front, Nashville has depth on the blue line. In fact, they have the best depth in the entire NHL. Their top two scorers are Roman Josi, and Shea Weber. The last time these two teams met, Shea Weber scored a god damn hat-trick. Luckily for us, we won that game. If you don't recall, we had a bit of fairy dust, and unicorns on our side.
Anyways, Nashville is better than the last couple of teams Detroit has played. Oddly enough, Detroit has dominated Central Division opponents over the last couple of seasons. That's good, right? Who knows at this point. All I know is that we need to win this game. Go Wings. Get hungry. Please god don't come out slow, and sloppy.
Line Combinations
Red Wings' Lineup
Forwards
| Gustav Nyquist | Henrik Zetterberg | Justin Abdelkader |
| Darren Helm | Pavel Datsyuk | Brad Richards |
| Tomas Jurco | Riley Sheahan | Tomas Tatar |
| Joakim Andersson | Luke Glendening | Tomas Nosek |
Defensemen
| Niklas Kronwall | Danny DeKeyser |
| Brendan Smith | Mike Green |
| Jakub Kindl | Alexey Marchenko |
Goaltenders
| Petr Mrazek |
| Jimmy Howard |
Scratches: None
Injuries: Johan Franzen, Jonathan Ericsson, Dylan Larkin, Kyle Quincey, Drew Miller, Teemu Pulkkinen
Wild Lineup
Forwards
| Zach Parise | Mikael Granlund | Jason Pominville |
| Thomas Vanek | Mikko Koivu | Jason Zucker |
| Nino Niederreiter | Charlie Coyle | Justin Fontaine |
| Erik Haula | Jarret Stoll | Ryan Carter |
Defensemen
| Ryan Suter | Jared Spurgeon |
| Jonas Brodin | Marco Scandella |
| Nate Prosser | Matthew Dumba |
Goaltenders
| Devan Dubnyk |
| Darcy Kuemper |
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| WILD | THE MATCH-UP | RED WINGS |
| 18-10-6 (4th in Central, 42 pts) | Record | 18-10-7 (2nd in Atlantic, 43 pts) |
| 2.71 (9th in NHL) | Goals Per Game | 2.60 (15th in NHL) |
| 2.44 (21st in NHL) | Goals Against Per Game | 2.54 (15th in NHL) |
| 19.6% (13th in NHL) | Power Play % | 18.6% (16th in NHL) |
| 77.1% (27th in NHL) | Penalty Kill % | 82.0% (11th in NHL) |
| James Neal (13 goals) | Goal Leader | Dylan Larkin (13 goals) |
| Roman Josi (26 points) | Points Leader | Henrik Zetterberg (27 points) |
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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.