Red Wings-Capitals: Detroit GameDay

The Detroit Red Wings and Washington Capitals (13-18-2) meet tonight for the first time since December 9th, 2005. Detroit won that meeting 4-3 in Washington.

The puck drops at 7:00 ET on Versus. 

 

The Caps have had a rough season so far. They managed just three wins in November, dropping five in a row from the 10th to the 21st of that month.

Since head coach Glen Hanlon was fired on the 22nd, however, the team is 7-4-1.

Five of those wins have come in December, as the Caps have lost only two of their last seven. They are coming off a 3-2 “character win” in Tampa Bay on Saturday, a game which came the night after a tough 5-3 loss to Buffalo.

The loss to the Sabres snapped a three-game winning streak in which Washington managed victories over Atlanta, New Jersey, and the New York Rangers. Tonight’s game is the second of a two-stop road trip, and will be their third in four nights.

Alexander Ovechkin, predictably enough, leads the team in goals (23) and points (38). Michael Nylander leads in assists with 20. Defenseman Mike Green is second in goals-scored with eight, while Nylander is third with seven.

The Caps don’t get a lot of goals from anyone other than Ovechkin, though their three main centers (Nylander, Nicklas Backstrom, and Viktor Kozlov) have accounted for 52 combined assists.

The Caps will be without Chris Clark (groin), Eric Fehr (back/hip), and Boyd Gordon (hand).

Backup goalie Brent Johnson started versus Tampa Bay, but there’s no reason to believe Olaf Kolzig won’t be in net tonight. Kolzig is 10-14-1 this season with a 2.88 GAA and .896 save-percentage. He's 2-8-1-0 against the Wings in his career.

For the Capitals' perspective, be sure to stop by Japer’s Rink, On Frozen Blog, Off Wing Opinion, Ted’s Take,  A View From the Cheap Seats,  Capitals Corner,  Dump ‘N Chase,  and Capitals Insider.

Japer’s Rink has their preview posted.

 

The Wings are coming off an entertaining, if strange, 5-2 win over Florida on Saturday.

The game featured two own-goals and two penalty shots to go with fast-paced action, and was a decent follow-up to the team’s lackluster performance against the Oilers on Thursday. 

The Wings' 4-3 shootout loss to Edmonton was something of a foregone conclusion after their tiring win in Nashville on the 10th. The loss to the Oilers snapped a seven-game win streak, during which Detroit played some of their best hockey of the season.

Dan Cleary became the fourth Red Wing to score 10 or more goals this season when he potted his 10th Saturday night. Dan is 13 goals behind team leader Henrik Zetterberg, who also leads in points with 45.

Pavel Datsyuk is the team leader in assists with 25; Nick Lidstrom is second with 24. Valtteri Filppula has a mere seven goals, but two of them came on penalty shots, so if he gets a step on the Caps’ defense, watch out.

14-goal-scorer Tomas Holmstrom (knee) is slated to make his return to the lineup after  missing two games. If Homer is actually making a return, Mark Hartigan will be sent back to Grand Rapids.

Kris Draper (knee) and Kirk Maltby (back) remain out. Aaron Downey and Matt Ellis will continue to fill in.

Dominik Hasek should be the starter tonight, as Chris Osgood got the nod on Saturday.

For more of the Wings’ perspective, see Snapshots, Gorilla Crouch, Abel to Yzerman, HockeyTownTodd, Gloveside, Behind the Jersey, No Pun Intended, Red Wings Nation, yzerman is god, and Winging It In Motown.

Nathan already has a pregame post up at HTT and IwoCPO has a discussion on shutting down Alexander Ovechkin. 

HockeyTownTodd himself has a post on why the Wings aren’t playing all that well here.

 

One thing the Wings cannot do is take the Caps for granted tonight. Washington may be 29th in the league standings, but they’ve slowly been building up confidence over the past few weeks.

They’re coming off a solid win over a talented-if-underperforming Tampa Bay team, and will be looking to make a statement tonight.

The Wings will need to play tighter defense than they did against Florida.  They’ll need to find a way to silence Ovechkin, who will be making his first visit to Detroit and will take it as a personal challenge to break through the Wings’ shutdown efforts.

Detroit can’t get into the same kind of freewheeling end-to-end hockey they played against the Panthers—otherwise Ovechkin will make them pay. Instead, the Wings need to play their puck possession offensive style and their trademark smothering defense.

In short, they need their “A” game.

The Wings are the better team, top to bottom, but if they go into this game taking a win for granted, they’re headed for a fall. They haven’t had much trouble with cockiness this season, so I don’t expect them to be flat tonight. Not for that reason, anyway.

Japer’s Rink asked me to give them a sentence or two on why the Wings will win tonight. I told them that the Wings roster and record speak for themselves.

Hopefully that’ll translate to a win.

(via On the Wings)