With the Wings beating Carolina 2-0 on Saturday night and the Canadiens–Maple Leafs game going to overtime, the Red Wings‘ first round opponent was officially set. Detroit will open their postseason against the Atlantic 2-seed Tampa Bay Lightning.
Detroit went 1-2-1 against Tampa in the regular season, being outscored 11-9 in those four games. Overall, the Lightning went 32-8-1 in the regular season at Amalie Arena. Detroit was 22-15-5 on the road.
While the schedule has yet to be released, the series will start on Thursday. Amalie Arena will be unavailable for a Wednesday start because ‘The Who Hits 50!’ tour will be playing there that night. The good news is that if you’re an out-of-state fan, you should still be able to get tickets to that at least.
We’ll have lots of coverage for the series to come prior to Thursday, including hopefully finding out on Monday the status of our starting goaltender and the status of Justin Abdelkader’s injured hand. Stay tuned folks and LGRW.
