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Red Wings Pregame:
.@KenKalDRW and Daniella Bruce preview Tuesday night's game against the Montreal Canadiens. #MTLvsDET #LGRW
— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) January 7, 2020
Presented by: @Athletico https://t.co/4SoGtuFwhX
After years of being at the mercy of the Canadiens, somehow Detroit has won the first two contests this season. Bertuzzi has a tally in each game, Larkin has assists in both, and Green had a goal and assist in the last contest. For Montreal Tatar has a goal and an assist int he past 2 with Domi and aria also scoring. Anthony Mantha has typically had some success against Montreal but is still unavailable. Detroit’s projected lineup is as follows:
Bertuzzi-Larkin-Fabbri Glendening-Filppula-Zadina Helm-Nielsen-Erne Abdelkader-Ehn-Smith Nemeth-Green Lashoff-Hronek Biega-Bowey Bernier in net
Bernier has had a bit of an uptick in his past six starts with a 2.02gaa and .942 SV%. His season save% is now .904 and 3.04 GAA. Interestingly(and surprisingly) Carey Price has very similar numbers at 3.01 GAA and .902 sv%.
Special teams numbers have slowly crept up for Detroit with the PK at 73.6%(30) and the pp at 15.7% (26th) for a special teams total of 89.3%. Montreal sits at PK 77%(24th) and pp at 21.7% (11th) for a total special teams number of 98.7%, right on the cusp of the Scotty Bowman approved 100%.
Former Red Wing Tomas Tatar leads Montreal in goals and assists with 16 and 21 respectively while Bertuzzi leads Detroit with 15 goals (16 assists) and Larkin leads with 17 assists (10 goals). Very nice to see Tats doing so well with his new team. He was a fan favorite (as well as one of mine) when he was in Detroit, but the acquisition price from Las Vegas of a first, second and third was too good to pass up for Ken Holland at the time.
Montreal currently sits 6 points outside of a wild card spot but with Buffalo, Philadelphia and Columbus all in front of them it is a steep climb. It is a source of disappointment, to be sure, for the Canadiens. Expect a bit of a raucous start as Montreal is coming off of a one goal loss to Winnipeg last night. There is a lot of pride for the Canadiens, and enough time in the season to turn things around.
Detroit is operating below even skeptical expectations, comfortably in last place. The mantra seems to be “let the kids develop, don’t worry about the losses.… The players are, admirably, working hard to try and reverse their fortunes. Zadina is garnering some praise from the staff and players alike. Blashill even noted that #11 was possibly the best forward on the ice for Detroit against Dallas. High praise for 20 year old.
I do expect a few more wins in the second half, but feel confident the team probably won’t hit 65 points. Injuries continue to plague this group, and I fully expect at least a couple of trades before the deadline. With Yzerman back from the WJC it is safe to assume there are a lot of potential deals cooking. It will be interesting to see if any visiting teams leave with players in tow over the next several weeks.
We’ll see if Detroit can continue their win streak over Montreal. Those two wins are 1/5 of Detroit's victories this season. We’ll see if they can make it 3.
Thanks to everyone who stops by to read and comment. Keep it coming!