On the Wings

Update (7:07 PM): IwoCPO is hosting his usual liveblog over at Abel to Yzerman. - Matt

Update (6:52 PM): You can watch the game online at NHL TV here. - Matt

Update (5:48 PM): Bruce MacLeod confirms that Dominik Hasek is starting tonight and that Tomas Holmstrom will return.

Ansar Khan says Kris Draper is looking at a Wednesday return. If he can make it back then, he won’t play the next night as he’ll have to take it somewhat slow to start.

Red Wings TV has added five game day interviews. George Malik breaks down the Filppula, Hasek, and Babcock interviews here.

• Valtteri Filppula
• Dominik Hasek
• Mike Babcock
• Henrik Zetterberg
  • Not working at the moment
• Pavel Datsyuk
  • Talks some about Ovechkin, looks very serious. Expect a big night out of him.

On the Capitals side of things, the WaPo’s Tarik El-Bashir confirms that Olaf Kolzig will start, while WashingtonCapitals.com’s Mike Vogel has a nice piece on JLA and the Wings’ locker room. - Matt

Update (11:08 AM): Paul Kukla has some good game day comments here.  - Matt

Tonight the Wings and the Washington Capitals meet for the first time since December 9th, 2005. Detroit won that meeting, 4-3 in Washington. The game is on Versus.

The Caps have had a rough season so far. They managed just three wins in November and dropped five in a row from the 10th to the 21st of that month. Since head coach Glen Hanlon was fired on the 22nd, however, they are 7-4-1. Five of those wins have come in December as the Caps have lost only two of their last seven. They are coming off a 3-2 “character win” in Tampa Bay on Saturday, a game which came the night after a tough 5-3 loss to Buffalo. The loss to the Sabres snapped a three-game winning streak in which Washington managed wins over Atlanta, New Jersey, and the New York Rangers. Tonight’s game is the second of a two-stop road trip and will be their third in four nights.

Alexander Ovechkin, predictably enough, leads the team in goals (23) and points  (38). Michael Nylander leads in assists with 20. Defenseman Mike Green is second in goals-scored with eight, while Nylander is third with seven. The Caps just don’t get a lot of goals from anyone other than Ovechkin, though their three main centers (Nylander, Nicklas Backstrom, and Viktor Kozlov) account for 52 assists together.

The Caps will b without Chris Clark (groin), Eric Fehr (back/hip) and Boyd Gordon (hand).

Backup Brent Johnson started versus Tampa Bay, but there’s no reason to believe Olaf Kolzig won’t be in net tonight. Kolzig is 10-14-1 this season with a 2.88 GAA and .896 save-percentage. He is 2-8-1-0 against the Wings in his career.

For the Capitals perspective, be sure to stop by Japer’s Rink, On Frozen Blog, Off Wing Opinion, Ted’s Take,  A View From the Cheap Seats,  Capitals Corner,  Dump ‘N Chase,  and Capitals Insider. Japer’s Rink has their preview posted.

The Wings are coming off an entertaining, if strange, 5-2 win over Florida on Saturday. The game featured two own-goals and two penalty shots to go with fast-paced action and was a decent follow-up to the team’s lackluster performance against the Oilers on Thursday.  Their 4-3 shootout loss to Edmonton was something of a foregone conclusion after their tiring win in Nashville on the 10th. The loss to the Oilers snapped a seven-game win streak, over which the Wings played some of their best hockey of the season.

Dan Cleary became the fourth Red Wing to score 10 or more goals this season when he potted his 10th Saturday night. Dan is 13 goals behind team leader Henrik Zetterberg, who also leads in points with 45. Pavel Datsyuk is the team leader in assists with 25 and Nick Lidstrom is second with 24. Valtteri Filppula has a mere 7 goals, but two of them came on penalty shots, so if he gets a step on the Caps’ defense, watch out.

14-goal-scorer Tomas Holmstrom (knee) is slated to make his return to the lineup after  missing two games. It Homer is actually making a return, Mark Hartigan will be sent back to Grand Rapids. Kris Draper (knee) and Kirk Maltby (back) remain out. Aaron Downey and Matt Ellis will continue to fill in.

Dominik Hasek should be the starter tonight, as Chris Osgood got the nod on Saturday.

For more of the Wings’ perspective, see Snapshots, Gorilla Crouch, Abel to Yzerman, HockeyTownTodd, Gloveside, Behind the Jersey, No Pun Intended, Red Wings Nation, yzerman is god, and Winging It In Motown. Nathan already has a pre-game post up at HTT and IwoCPO has a discussion on shutting down Alexander Ovechkin.  HockeyTownTodd himself has a post on why the Wings aren’t playing all that well here.

One thing the Wings cannot do is take the Caps for granted tonight. Washington may be 29th in the League standings, but they’ve slowly been building up confidence over the past few weeks and are looking to climb the standings. They’re coming off a solid win over a talented-if-under-performing Tampa Bay team and will be looking to make a statement tonight.

The Wings will need to play tighter defense than they did against Florida.  They’ll need to find a way to silence Ovechkin, who will be making his first visit to Detroit and will take it as a personal challenge to break through the Wings’ shutdown efforts. They can’t get into the same kind of freewheeling end-to-end hockey they played against the Panthers, otherwise Ovechkin will make them pay. They need to play their puck possession offensive style and their trademark smothering defense. In short, they need their “A” game.

The Wings are the better team, top to bottom, but if they go into this game taking a win for granted because of that, they’re headed for a fall. They haven’t had much trouble with cockiness this season, however, so I don’t expect them to be flat tonight. Not for that reason, anyway.

Japer’s Rink asked me to give them a sentence or two on why the Wings will win tonight. I told them that the Wings roster and record speak for themselves. Hopefully that’ll translate to a win tonight.