On the Wings

Tonight is the second of eight games between these two Central Division teams this season. The Wings won the first meeting 3-0 at home on the 10th.

Since losing to the Wings, the Predators have gone 5-1-1, though three of those wins came against the lowly Columbus Blue Jackets. Their only regulation loss came against the Stars in Dallas on Wednesday night, a 1-0 decision. They rebounded the next night, though, rolling over the Vancouver Canucks on Thursday by a score of 6-0.

It was a costly win for the Preds, however, as they lost star goalie Tomas Vokoun to a torn thumb ligament. He’ll be out 4-6 weeks after he has surgery on Monday. Backup Chris Mason will start in his absence.

As bad as the Wings’ injury situation as seemed lately, Nashville has probably had it worse. Aside from Vokoun, they will be without centers Jason Arnot (3-6 weeks, knee) and Josef Vasicek (back), right wing Scotty Upshall, and defenseman Mikko Lehtonen (concussion).

The Wings have gone 1-1-3 since beating the Predators, with their only win coming against the Canucks on the 14th. They are coming off a 3-2 shootout loss at home to the Blues last night. It was Manny Legace’s first game in Detroit since he signed with St. Louis over the summer after being let go by Detroit. The loss continued a four-game streak in which the Wings have earned a point in three straight overtime or shootout losses.

Dominik Hasek played last night and so will not start tonight unless the Wings go against everything they’ve been saying about not playing him consecutive nights until the second half of the season. So, Joey MacDonald should be in net.

Niklas Kronwall made his return to the lineup last night, bringing an end to all the contradictory media reports about the timing of it. So, only Johan Franzen (concussion, knee) and Chris Osgood (wrist) are on the Wings’ injury list.

I only caught a little of the first period of the game last night but I wasn’t too impressed with what I saw. I hope the Wings can put on a better performance tonight, especially considering a nemesis of theirs, Tomas Vokoun, will not be playing. The Preds are a weakened team and though they’ll still be dangerous, the Wings need to take advantage of it.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to watch the game tonight and so there will be no game summary from me. While I’m at it, I might as well say that I’m at the point in the semester where school is becoming very demanding as we get closer to finals. So, game summaries, which are very time-consuming, may be a little sporadic over the next three weeks. The games bookend this coming week so I’ll probably be able to watch and report on them, but they’re too close together the following two weeks. We’ll just have to see how it goes.