GAME DAY
The Red Wings will take on Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins tonight at the Joe as the Wings continue their bid to make their 23rd consecutive trip to the post season. The Penguins shook off two straight losses to the Flyers with a 5-1 win against the Dallas Stars Tuesday and will be looking to earn another two points tonight to try and catch the Bruins for the top spot in the Eastern Conference. The Red Wings are coming off an important 3-2 win against the Toronto Maple Leafs Tuesday, a win in which Gustav Nyquist took the bull by the horns and scored two of the three Wings tallies. Both the Wings and the Pens and 5-4-1 over their last ten games.
Gustav Nyquist could become the first Red Wing to hit the 20-goal mark this season tonight and if I had to put some money on it, I’d say he’ll do it. Nyquist has been one of the hottest players in the league over the last month and he was on top of his game Tuesday night. Nyquist’s two goals were not just bang-home-the-trash garbage goals, they were the kind of pick-off-the-D-burn-down-three-quarters-of-the-ice goals that shift the momentum of a game. Nyquist has a emerged as a dynamic, exciting, and dangerous scorer that could be a primary reason that the Wings extend their post-season streak should they be able to do so.
From the top if the stat sheet to the bottom, Luke Glendening has yet to score his first NHL goal in his first 42 games played. Glendening has quietly been a very effective penalty killer and strong point on the third or fourth line. Glendening played over 18 minutes against the Leafs Tuesday and while his presence isn’t often found on the scoresheet, the value of a safe and reliable defensive forward is underrated on roster peppered with injury. Call it bias coming from the son of the player with the least amount of goals for any player to play 1000 games, but I’d love to see Glendening score one before the year is out.
As the season that has been defined by injuries to key players comes closer to a close it’s hard to believe that any other team could have lost more man games than the Red Wings who currently have 10 regulars out of the lineup, but the broken crown for man games lost due to injury is currently held by none other than the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Penguins’ situation is a little different than the Wings’, where the Wings have had player after player sustain short to medium term injuries one after the other (or all at the same time), the Penguins have lost a few players to much longer term injuries. That being said, some might argue that missing a top defensive pairing like Paul Martin and Kris Letang is every bit as tough to deal with as missing star scorers like Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk. Jonathan Ericsson is the latest to join the list of clipped Wings after he left Tuesday’s game with a broken finger.
Deadline acquisition David Legwand is expected to be centering Daniel Alfredsson and Johan Franzen again as the Wings top line tonight. The vets will need to be on their toes to keep the Penguins firepower at bay tonight. The one-two punch of Pittsburgh’s top two lines makes playing the matching game difficult, there isn’t much relief when you see Crosby skate off the ice and then Malkin jump over the boards. Crosby leads the league with 91 points while Malkin averages over a point a game with 66 points in 57 games. The Wings will also want to avoid the penalty box as the Pittsburgh’s powerplay is the league’s second-best at 24%. To add fuel to that fire, Detroit’s PK percentage at home is a paltry 82.5%.
STARTING LINEUP (SUBJECT TO CHANGE)
RED WINGS
Alfredsson – Legwand – Franzen Nyquist – Sheahan – Tatar Miller – Glendening – Bertuzzi Pulkkinen – Emmerton – Ferraro
Kronwall – Smith Quincey – DeKeyser Kindl – Lashoff
Jimmy Howard (starting) Petr Mrazek
Injuries: Weiss, Helm, Zetterberg, Datsyuk, Cleary, Gustavsson, Jurco, Andersson, Abdelkader, Ericsson
PENGUINS
Kunitz – Crosby – Stempniak Jokinen – Malkin – Neal Glass – Goc – Vitale Gibbons – Sutter – Adams
Orpik – Niskanen Maata – Scuderi Bortuzzo – Despres
Marc-Andre Fleury (starting) Jeff Zatkoff
Injuries: Bennett, Vokoun, Conner, Martin, Dupuis, Letang