Dan Ellis has been pegged as the starter for this series. He finished 23-10-3 and appeared in 44 games. He posted a 2.34 GAA and .924 save-percentage.
His colleague, Chris Mason, went 18-22-6, appearing in 51 games and posting a 2.90 GAA and .898 save-percentage.
Mason and Ellis have five games of playoff experience between them and all of them belong to Mason. He posted a 1-4 record in last year's playoffs. Ellis has just 45 NHL games of any kind under his belt.
Injuries
The Predators lost 238 man-games to injury. 82 of those were because of Steve Sullivan's back injury, which has had him out indefinitely.
Currently, Nashville is without Gelinas (knee, season), Ortmeyer (knee, season), and Legwand (foot, day-to-day).
Legwand practiced yesterday, but his status for tonight is "doubtful."
Resources
Pred-Joe
Official blog
LadyPredator
On the Forecheck
The Tennessean blog
The Wings finished the season 54-21-7 for 115 points. They skated to a 41-10-4 record through February 5th, but a 1-8-2 skid over the rest of the month hurt their pace. They rebounded in March and April, however, finishing with a 12-3-1 record in their final 16. Thus it would be a falsehood to say that they "faltered down the stretch."
The Wings clinched a playoff spot with their March 13th win over Dallas, notching their 99th and 100th points in the process. They clinched first overall with their 3-2 win over Columbus on April 3rd, beating out San Jose for the honor.
The Red Wing organization is 269-248-1 (yes, one tie) all-time in the post-season. That translates to 58 series wins and 45 exits. This is the organization's 104th playoff series.
Forwards
Pavel Datsyuk lead all Detroit skaters with 97 points, an NHL 4th-best. His 66 assists were also a team-high.
Henrik Zetterberg led the team in goals with 43 and his 92 points put him in second place among Red Wing skaters.
In addition to Zetterberg, the Wings received double-digit goal contributions from seven other forwards: Datsyuk (31), Johan Franzen (27), Tomas Holmstrom (20), Dan Cleary (20), Valtteri Filppula (19), Jiri Hudler (13), and Mikael Samuelsson (11). Only six regulars finished with less than ten goals.
The Wings' forward corps contributed 210 of the Wings' 3rd-best 252 goals.
Pavel Datsyuk finished the league leader in plus-minus at +41. The Wings' featured three over +20-or-better forwards: Mikael Samuelsson (+21), Dan Cleary (+21), and Henrik Zetterberg (+30).
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