Bullet-point recap for this one tonight.
- I’m writing this bullet at the very start of this game: I expect the Wings to get caved in this matchup. The Hawks are playing a lot of regulars and Detroit has Riley Sheahan as their 1C, but I’ll be watching to see how the defense reacts to this. Good test for Jensen, Cholowski, and Hronek tonight.
- I don’t want to pick on Ericsson, who seemed to be moving pretty well early, but the pass-to-Bertuzzi’s-feet-at-the-offensive-blue-line-and-then-jump-deper-into-the-zone-to-create-a-2-on-1-against-your-defense-partner play probably needs a bit more practice before the regular season starts.
- The whole thing about watching Cholowski and Hronek gets even better the more I get to watch them have to deal with being out against Patrick Kane’s line. If nothing else, that should give both of them a huge view of how high the mountain in front of them is and how much more climbing they’ll have to do to get there.
- I’d like to think David Booth’s entire PTO is paid for by his preseason superpower of drawing penalties in exhibition games.
- Depending on how things shake out, it wouldn’t be completely out of the blue for Ben Street to make the club out of camp. He’s a well-polished career AHLer who sits pretty comfortably on the NHL fringe. He’s playing pretty well in preseason so far, all things considered.
- Things went off the rails early in the second as the Wings gave up three goals to go down 4-0. Two of those goals happened between the end of the PHI/BOS game that was on NHLN and that channel picking up the in-progress coverage of this game. They actually had to delay taking us to live action of the game to show us a replay of a Blackhawks goal.
- Michael Rasmussen scored a nice greasy goal by crashing the crease and getting his own rebound. If he scores 30 from there it counts just as well as if he snipes them, so go, big guy. /
Red Wings score a goal (!!!) Looks like Rasmussen got this one.. Great patience by him to make it happen pic.twitter.com/Ps5g5JOylq
— Kyle M. (@KyleWIIM) September 22, 2017
- Luke Witkowski flat out jumped at a guy, increasing his grit power output by 0.2 Gigaw Otts. This was just before the Blackhawks announcing crew said he reminded them of Henrik Zetterberg, which is probably not going to end up in the top 20 dumbest things said by Pat Foley this season.
- I’ve been on this train before, but I still like the idea of using Martin Frk as the poor man’s Thomas Vanek to get sheltered ES minutes and just bomb it on the power play. He’s fun to watch shoot.
- More-impressed by both Svechnikov and Rasmussen in this game. They handled the puck better and seemed to work decently off each other. Of course, about five minutes after I typed this, Svechnikov went down kind of awkwardly and took an accidental knee to the side of the head which appeared to daze him. This happened with about 15 to go in the third and he didn’t come back out.
- I don’t know why Petr Mrazek started the third period of this game… or the second period… or this game, really. Maybe Blashill is still mad at him? I think the whole “letting in 5 during two periods” probably qualified him for the rest of the night off, but what do I know?
- I want to finish this on a positive note so I will say that Nick Jensen looks to have picked up where he left off last year. He didn’t get many opportunities to shine, but was a bright spot handling tough competition. /
Eh this game sucked, so it lived up to expectations. The Wings fall to 0-for-3 in three preseason road games so far and appear to have an injured Svechnikov now. Back in action on Saturday night as the first hockey game in the LCA starts at 7pm.
