On the Wings

Update (6:43 PM): Ansar Khan reports that Chris Chelios will sit out tonight’s game due to a lower body injury sustained in the third period last night.

Andreas Lilja, who was playing well before becoming a healthy scratch with Danny Markov’s return, will take his place in the lineup.

Khan also reports that Robert Lang will go tonight, while Mikael Samuelsson will sit. - Matt

Tonight is the fourth of eight games between these two teams this season. The Wings lead the series thus far, with wins in the first (4-1, Nov 4) and latest (5-0, Dec 20) games. The Blue Jackets won the the Dec 18 meeting, 4-3 in Columbus. These teams will not meet again until January 19th.

The Jackets have played three games since losing to the Wings on the 20th and have gone 2-1-0, with wins over Vancouver and Boston. Their loss came on Long Island, a 4-0 decision against the Islanders. The win over the Bruins was a 5-4 overtime comeback triumph, which will no doubt give them a lot of confidence going in to tonight’s game. Columbus has excelled at home under Ken Hitchcock, posting a 5-1-0 record to this point of his tenure.

Fredrik Norrena will be in net for the Jackets tonight. He was pulled in the third period of the Wings’ 5-0 drubbing of Columbus and will be looking to redeem himself.

The Wings are coming off a 3-1 home win over the Wild last night. It was probably their best performance of the three games in the miniseries with Minnesota. Dominik Hasek kept the Wings in it when the Wild made pushes, making 32 saves to improve to 19-5-3 for the season. Kirk Maltby scored 16 seconds into the game and Henrik Zetterberg and Johan Franzen scored before the halfway point of the second period.

Chris Osgood will be in net tonight, since it’s the second game of a back-to-back sequence.

According to George Sipple’s blog post, Robert Lang should be in the lineup tonight, even though he left last night’s game after the first period due to the flu. Sipple lists Lang as questionable in today’s Wings Corner, however, so he may sit.

It looks like Mikael Samuelsson will sit out at least one more game, which means Josh Langfeld will get some more time with the team.

I wrote above that last night’s win was probably the Wings’ most impressive game they played against the Wild in the miniseries. That’s not saying much, however. They have definitely not played their best hockey over the past three games. The Blue Jackets will be looking to make up for the embarrassment of following up a 4-3 home win with a 5-0 road loss and will take advantage of the Wings if they sit back and rely on goaltending. Columbus a lot more skill than the Wild do and play a more aggressive game.

Given how the Wings generally play on the second night of a back-to-back stretch (2-3-2), they may be in trouble tonight.