Helene St. James has a brief interview with Mike Babcock in which he discusses defensive pairings and forward lines, among other things. It’s typical Babcock, all excitement about competition for the 7th defensive spot and having a banger like Dallas Drake threaten to move up in the depth chart.
It does look like, for now at least, Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk will be split up, as he has them slated to play with Mikael Samuelsson and Tomas Holmstrom, respectively, with Jiri Hudler and Johan Franzen filling in the other spots. Valtteri Filpulla is penciled in with Kris Draper and Dan Cleary at the moment. Babcock sees Tomas Kopecky, Kirk Maltby and Drake making up the fourth line. As he points out, Igor Grigorenko would throw all of that off, if he makes the team, but that’s a good problem to have.
The defensive pairings as he has them now are pretty obvious: Nick Lidstrom with Brian Rafalski, Andreas Lilja with Niklas Kronwall, and Chris Chelios with Brett Lebda.
Personally, I’d be surprised if this is quite the look we’ll see when the puck drops in October, as Babcock will have plenty of time to tinker and will undoubtedly come up with different combinations.