Line Combinations
Red Wings Lineup
Forwards
| Justin Abdelkader | Henrik Zetterberg | Dylan Larkin |
| Tomas Tatar | Brad Richards | Johan Franzen |
| Gustav Nyquist | Riley Sheahan | Teemu Pulkkinen |
| Drew Miller | Luke Glendening | Tomas Jurco |
Defensemen
| Niklas Kronwall | Jonathan Ericsson |
| Kyle Quincey | Mike Green |
| Brendan Smith | Jakub Kindl |
Goaltenders
| Jimmy Howard (starting) |
| Petr Mrazek |
1st Power Play Unit: Abdelkader-Franzen-Nyquist-Zetterberg-Kronwall
2nd Power Play Unit: Sheahan-Tatar-Pulkkinen-Richards-Green
Scratches: Alexey Marchenko, Joakim Andersson, Landon Ferraro
Injuries: Pavel Datsyuk, Danny DeKeyser, Darren Helm
No-Man’s Land: Daniel Cleary (At Home Depot picking up materials for projects one does when one is about to retire)
Lightning Lineup
The Lightning won’t skate today due to their game yesterday, so this is their lineup from that game. In talking to our good friend @Tanyarezak, we’ve got the possibility that Nesterov might sub in for a left-handed defenseman, Paquette might be back from his preseason injury (likely in Namestnikov’s place), and Cooper may just go with Poulin in net. We’ll share updates as soon as we get them.
Forwards
| Jonathan Drouin | Steven Stamkos | Ryan Callahan |
| Ondrej Palat | Tyler Johnson | Nikita Kucherov |
| Alex Killorn | Valtteri Filppula | Erik Condra |
| Brian Boyle | Vladislav Namestikov | J.T. Brown |
Defensemen
| Victor Hedman | Anton Stralman |
| Matt Carle | Jason Garrison |
| Braydon Coburn | Andrej Sustr |
Goaltenders
| Ben Bishop |
| Kevin Poulin |
Scratches: Nikita Nesterov
Injuries: Mattias Ohlund, Andrei Vasilevski, Cedric Paquette
Let’s Go Red Wings!!!
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Players to Watch:
For Detroit:
Brad Richards in his first game for Detroit against the first team he won a cup with should be a fun storyline. Richards has been solid so far through two games but not exceptional. He’s going to have his hands full with whatever line he ends up taking on.
Also, Tomas Jurco pulls into the lineup for the first time this season in place of Landon Ferraro. Interesting to see how he plays given his chance on the 4th line.
For Tampa:
Steven Stamkos got his 500th career point yesterday against the Bruins. Sometimes it’s easy to forget he’s 25 years old. He’s the superstar it’s impossible to hate right now and that’s kind of a rare thing in this league.
Key Match-ups:
Depending on whether Blashill’s line blender has to be used again, it’s possible that we see Tampa’s Triplets line against the New Kids Line for Detroit. I think Tatar-Larkin-Pulkkinen is a fun match up against Palat-Johnson-Kucherov. The question is whether we’ll see even a single shift of that head-to-head. Since getting that matchup in the first place means things may not be going well for the Wings, instead I’ll say that Zetterberg against Stamkos should be the key. Z kept Stamkos off the scoresheet at the expense of any goals for himself. Need to win this battle by more than just mutual elimination. Continuing to pound the drum, Tampa’s defense is very good with one notable exception: Andrej Sustr is their Jonathan Ericsson (except he’s on the third pair). You get speedy players out against him and they’ll spin him like a turnstile.
