WING THINGS
The Wings closed out the month of March with a strong weekend with bigs wins over the Maple Leafs and the Lightning to keep themselves in contention in a tight Eastern Conference Wild Card race. April will not start with an easy opponent as the Bruins come to town tonight. The Bruins are one of the hottest teams in the east since the Olympic break and are 9-0-1 over their last 10 games.
Gustav Nyquist has been a hot topic throughout the league. Nyquist is on a scoring tear that rivals any of the big name superstars at the top of the stat sheet. In the spirit of all the talk around the league about the young man who could be a key part of the Wings future, there are a few things I’d point out that set Nyquist apart from most.
Some scorers score the highlight reel goals, some scorers score the garbage goals, Gustav Nyquist scores both. Whether he is kicking the puck up from his skates to bang in a goal in the crease or going end to end with defenders draped over his back, there doesn’t seem to be a Nyquist-kind-of-goal. It doesn’t matter how it happens, the puck seems to find the back of the net. Nyquist is a scorer’s scorer with a deadly accurate shot and hands to match.
One of Nyquist’s most admirable qualities is how humble he is in the midst of his recent success. All you need to do is watch any post game interview Nyquist gives. It doesn’t matter if he took the puck three quarters of the way down the ice and danced through half the other team, Nyquist always passes the credit along to a good pass, a nice setup play by a linemate or a stroke of luck. Luck and linemates can only carry you so far, Nyquist is the real deal but he chooses to let his play to the talking.
With all the praise comes expectation and responsibility, and tonight that weight will be firmly on Nyquist’s shoulders as Daniel Alfredsson will be out of the lineup tonight. Alfredsson is out for “undisclosed reasons… and the result will be an even thinner lineup than usual.
The Red Wings beat the Bruins both times they met this season however the Detroit lineup looked a lot different back in the fall. The story for both teams is so consistent on either side, there really are no surprises. The Wings continue to battle through injury problems and the Bruins continue to ride the wave of success they’ve enjoyed since the Olympic Break. Tonight’s game will come down to who wants the win more. The Red Wings have proven that even with a depleted lineup, they can contend with the top teams in the league. As the Bruins’ streak continues while their playoff fate is all but sealed the struggle for them will be to stay the course and continue to play hard even though they won’t need to play with the same desperation.
It’s wild to say that a two point gap between a playoff berth and early golf season indicates some separation in the Eastern Conference Wild Card race but that’s just the case. As the games remaining slip away, each pair of points represents another game needed to catch up in the standings and soon enough, there will be no more games remaining.
STARTING LINEUPS
RED WINGS
Franzen - Legwand - Nyquist Tatar - Sheahan - Jurco Andersson - Helm - Abdelkader Miller - Glendening - Bertuzzi
Kronwall - Smith Quincey - DeKeyser Kindl - Lashoff
Jimmy Howard (starting) Jonas Gustavsson
Injuries: Ericsson, Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Cleary, Weiss, Samuelsson, Alfredsson
BRUINS
Lucic - Krejci - Iginla Marchand - Bergeron - Smith Kelly - Soderberg - Eriksson Paille - Campbell - Thornton
Chara - Boychuk Bartkowski - Krug Miller - Meszaros
Tukka Rask (Starting) Chad Johnson
Injuries: Savard, McQuaid, Seidenberg