On the Wings

Tonight is the first of eight meetings between these two Central Division teams. The Wings won the season series last year, 7-1. They’ll face each other again next week and will play the remainder of their games over the course of the whole season, wrapping up with the last game.

The Blackhawks lost their season opener, 1-0 in Minnesota. They put up 27 shots, but ran into Niklas Backstrom, who Wild coach Jacque Lemaire said won the game for his team. Not only did the Hawks lose the game, they lost one of their most important players, Martin Havlat. The oft-injured Havlat apparently hurt his shoulder in a scrum in the third period. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the best the Hawks can hope for is that Havlat will only miss 7 games.

Our old friend Robert Lang will center the Hawks’ top line, with rookie Patrick Kane and abrasive Tuomo Ruutu on his wings. Jason Williams will skate on the second line with Rene Bourque and Yanic Perrault.

I expect Nikolai Khabibulin to be in net for Chicago tonight.

The Wings beat the Anaheim Ducks 3-2 in a shootout in their first game of the season. It was an impressive start to the game, though the shot totals were a bit misleading as many of the Wings’ 42 shots were low-percentage, long-distance shots. Overall, the Wings outplayed Anaheim, but it wasn’t by a whole lot.

The Wings fortunately don’t have any injuries to speak of.

Dominik Hasek will start again.

The Hawks are one of those teams with a lot of talent that have had a lot of trouble putting it together. I’d like to think they’re getting there, though. The Havlat injury certainly doesn’t help, but hopefully for them it won’t be long-term. If they can get big-money goaltending from Nikolai Khabibulin and production from their young guns as well, they could have a strong season. But tonight, I’ll be surprised if they give the Wings too much trouble.