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While Wednesday night's 2-1 victory by the Detroit Red Wings in their season opener over the Buffalo Sabres appeared to be a close contest when looking at the final score, a closer examination at some
advanced statistics helps to reveal just how thorough the domination was by the Red Wings despite the one-goal final margin.
Detroit's debut as an Eastern Conference team began on a successful note against one of the conference's weaker teams. That being said, Detroit's almost continuous possession of the puck at 5-on-5 was an impressive start to their journey through the Eastern Conference. It will be extremely interesting to watch how significantly those figures deviate once they play some of the stronger teams in the East.
As a result of Wednesday's strong effort, despite the numerous pleas from most Red Wing fans dying to see
Tomas Tatar get into the lineup in place of one of the veteran third or fourth line wingers,
Mike Babcock is content to remain with the exact same lineup as the season opener for tonight's first road test of the season against the Carolina Hurricanes.
Here are the projected lines for the Red Wings:
Henrik Zetterberg - Pavel Datsyuk - Justin Abdelkader
Johan Franzen - Stephen Weiss - Daniel Alfredsson
Daniel Cleary - Joakim Andersson - Todd Bertuzzi
Drew Miller - Cory Emmerton - Mikael Samuelsson
Niklas Kronwall - Jonathan Ericsson
Danny DeKeyser - Jakub Kindl
Brendan Smith - Kyle Quincey
Howard (starting)
Mrazek
Daniel Alfredsson will be in the lineup after taking a "maintenance day" yesterday. Although one could interpret it as a negative that "Alfie" is already banged up in early October, however the likelihood is that Alfredsson and the Wings are being cautious with the groin issue that held him out of a couple of preseason contests.
A notable item from Wednesday's contest was the amount of times Detroit's blueliners jumped into the offensive zone to contribute to the attack.
Niklas Kronwall jumped into the fray on numerous occasions and his outlet pass sprang
Cory Emmerton into the neutral zone to begin the rush leading to
Mikael Samuelsson's opening goal.
Jonathan Ericsson's pinch led to a turnover in the Buffalo zone allowing
Pavel Datsyuk to capitalize with a wicked backhander upstairs for what would be the eventual game-winning goal. DeKeyser, Kindl, Smith and Quincey also had instances where they joined the rush or
LED the offensive rush for the Wings.
Whether this was merely a circumstance given the specific opponent on Wednesday night or whether this is a point of emphasis this season for the Red Wings D' remains to be seen. However, I'm hopeful that the excellent mobility and puck handling abilities of this group means we will see an added injection of offense from the rearguards during 5-v-5 play.
As for the Hurricanes, they begin their 16th season in North Carolina looking to take advantage of five of their first seven games being at home. Last winter, we can all recall the inauspicious debut the Wings in their road opener when the St. Louis Blues jumped all over them early and cruised to a 6-0 shutout victory.
“I thought Tlusty played real well in exhibition. I know Eric real well, he’s a good player, and then you add Semin into the mix. He’s a world-class talent. He can pass the puck and shoot the puck, big body. It’s a good group.’’ - Mike Babcock on the Hurricanes top line
Given the 'Canes have been waiting for over a week to play a hockey game after concluding their preseason action, the expectation is they will be come flying out of the gates tonight when the puck is dropped. Head Coach
Kirk Muller is in his second season on the job in Carolina and was able to get his first full training camp to implement his systems and put his stamp on this hockey club. While it remains to be seen as to whether Muller is able to improve the good fortunes of the Hurricanes, a healthy
Cam Ward certainly could go a long way in improving the play of this hockey club.
Last season the Hurricanes began the season 12-8-1 with Ward spearheading the club, as his game was on the rise following a slow start in which he allowed four goals in six of his first 11 starts. Ward's 2012-13 season ended on March 3 when he suffered a third-degree sprain of his MCL against the Florida Panthers.
The Hurricanes played the final 27 games to the tune of 7-17-3, with a goals against average of 3.70 over that span. By comparison, the team's goals against average was 2.80 during the opening 21 contests when Ward was healthy.
Puck drop is tonight at 7:00pm ET (Fox Sports Detroit).
Projected Carolina lineup:
Jiri Tlusty – Eric Staal – Alexander Semin
Pat Dwyer – Jordan Staal – Nathan Gerbe
Jeff Skinner – Riley Nash – Radek Dvorak
Elias Lindholm – Brett Sutter – Drayson Bowman
Justin Faulk – Andrej Sekera
Brett Bellemore – Ron Hainsey
Jay Harrison – Ryan Murphy
Cam Ward (starting)
Anton Khudobin
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