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The Red Wings prepare this weekend for their final two tune-ups before next Thursday night’s season opener at home against the Boston Bruins. Tonight the Wings are in Toronto (7:30 pm) and face the Bruins in Boston tomorrow night (5:30 pm).
The final two preseason games are the closest thing we will get to a dress rehearsal for the Red Wings, with Saturday night’s contest in Boston the closest roster we will see resembling the expected opening night lineup. Meanwhile, tonight’s encounter in Toronto will act as a good warm-up for the leaders of this club with the all-Swede line (Zetterberg, Nyquist and Franzen) leading the forwards, while the pairing of Kronwall and DeKeyser spearhead the defence.
The likes of
Landon Ferraro and
Teemu Pulkkinen will get their likely final shot this evening to make a lasting impression on the management staff on whether they should begin the season in Detroit given the likely expected spot available for the short-term until
Pavel Datsyuk returns from his shoulder injury. Datsyuk is expected to miss the opening 1-2 of the regular season.
Meanwhile on the blueline, the trio of
Xavier Ouellet,
Alexey Marchenko and
Nick Jensen get another chance to make their case for one of the final two spots available on defense. As discussed yesterday, the fact that all three of these youngsters are waiver-exempt leads to the belief that they will begin the season in Grand Rapids. However, coach
Mike Babcock has been adamant all summer long and through training camp that the team should and will keep the best players in Detroit.
If that truly is the case, does Babcock and
Ken Holland attempt to stash
Jakub Kindl in Grand Rapids to start the season and risk the chance someone plucks him off of the waiver wire and takes on his three remaining years at $2.4 million? What kind of message does it send to the team if a deserving player gets sent down strictly based on his waiver-exempt status? The Wings did it last season with
Gustav Nyquist and it was quickly apparent upon his call-up in January that the wrong decision was made.
As per
Ansar Khan of mlive.com, here are tonight's expected lines and defense pairings:
Gustav Nyquist - Henrik Zetterberg - Johan Franzen
Teemu Pulkkinen - Joakim Andersson - Justin Abdelkader
Stephen Weiss - Tomas Nosek - Daniel Cleary
Drew Miller - Luke Glendening - Landon Ferraro
Niklas Kronwall - Danny DeKeyser
Brendan Smith - Alexey Marchenko
Xavier Ouellet - Nick Jensen
Jonas Gustavsson (whole game)
Petr Mrazek
The Red Wings still have 39 players in camp....with 31 of them on the road with the team for this final weekend of the pre-season. This includes
Darren Helm (groin) and
Jonathan Ericsson (hip flexor), who both expect to play Saturday in the exhibition finale in Boston.
Petr Mrazek is expected to start in goal on Saturday in Boston.
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Previous Posts
Nick Jensen...the forgotten man amongst the Wings rearguard prospects
Datsyuk out 4-5 weeks with second degree shoulder sprain
Injuries begin in earnest for the Red Wings
The Anthony Mantha Experience on hold
DeKeyser in, Alfredsson out....for now
Frk amongst several prospects turning heads in Traverse City
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