On the Wings

Again, I don’t have much time to blog today, so this will be brief:

Tonight is the 7th of 8 meetings between these two Central Division teams this season. The Wings lead the series 6-0, with wins November 2nd (2-1), December 14th (3-2), January 13th (6-3), February 21st (4-2), February 27th (4-1), and March 2nd (6-2). They’ll meet once more for the Wings’ final game of the season on Saturday in Detroit.

The Hawks had a pretty bad month of March, posting a 5-9-0 record (including the loss to the Wings). They wrapped up the month on a positive note, however, with a win over Columbus on the 30th and have since won their third in a row, a 3-2 shootout triumph over Nashville. Their final game is against Dallas on Sunday.

Nikolai Khabibulin should be in net tonight.

The Wings had a 7-3-4 March, which isn’t really all that great. They’ve won their last two, however, and are poised to take the Central Division title as well as that of the Western Conference. One more point and they’ll have the Division, and two points would ensure the Conference (though second place looks a lot more attractive at the moment).

Chris Osgood is slated to start tonight.

Mathieu Schneider will return tonight after missing Tuesday’s game with a right elbow injury.

As with the game against Columbus on Tuesday, it’s important that the Wings keep up their winning ways, though it’d be good to see them be a bit more assertive about it tonight. They were able to be sloppy against the Blue Jackets and can probably get away with it tonight as well, but that doesn’t mean they should play that way. It’s nice to win, but it’s even more important that they get into a groove playing their “A-game” rather than a groove playing a casual, complacent game.

With the Division and Conference races basically going down to the wire, the Wings ought to be going into the playoffs winning, rather than on their usual end-of-the-season slide. Still, it probably would have been better if the Division and Conference weren’t all but locked up now, as a little more doubt would be a motivating factor. Sure, they could still lose both, but they’d really have to collapse to miss out on the Central Division. Given that, you get the feeling that they’re coasting a little, but that could just be their habit of playing down to their opponents. Either way, hopefully they’ll keep their focus tonight and play top-flight hockey, rather than coast to another win over an inferior team.