According to Ansar, Mikael Samuelsson worked himself into another couple weeks of recuperation time after hearing a pop during practice Monday morning. That’s good news for Josh Langfeld, who’ll get more time at the NHL level (unless the Wings bring someone else up and send him back down), but bad news for the Wings, who could use Samuelsson back in the lineup.
Also, Dominik Hasek will be in net tomorrow night against Phoenix, but Joey MacDonald will start Thursday in St. Louis. Another instance of Babcock starting Dom against the lesser team while the backup gets the nod against the tougher team (which the Blues, as a team fighting for a playoff spot, are).
I think that they start Hasek against the first team of a back-to-back, regardless of who the game is against. This probably isn’t such a horrible thing, cause whether or not Hasek plays, he’d be tired the next night. And we all know we don’t want Dom playing tired. It just so happens that the easier team is usually first. It’s unfortunate that because of this, we tend to always end up playing Joey against a hotter or better team. But I don’t think it’s such a horrible move by Babcock.
I know their reasoning behind it and it makes sense to me not to play Dom when he can’t go through is full pre-game routine. It’s just bad for MacDonald because he seems to get hung out to dry more often than not by his teammates. Because his stats aren’t great, people start to think he’s “porous,” etc.