Chris McCosky reports that Chris Osgood and Kirk Maltby are out tonight with the flu. As a result, Jimmy Howard will start his second in two nights and Drew Miller will make his debut as a Red Wing against Vancouver.
This will be a nice test for Howard, who had a pretty solid 25 saves last night in Columbus. He’s unlikely to be quite as sheltered as he was while the Wings were busy drubbing the Jackets to the tune of 9-1. It’ll be interesting to see how he does. Howard apologists were probably thrilled by his performance in Ohio. Something tells me this time might be different.
Daniel Larsson has been called up to back Jimmy up, which may explain the Griffins signing a goalie to a PTO a couple days ago. Depending on how long Osgood’s been sick, this move may have been in the pipeline for a few days. Larsson played yesterday in Grand Rapids. It’s almost too bad the Wings aren’t take the opportunity to give him a look tonight.
Miller will skate on Abdelkader’s wing with Brad May. Should be a pretty abrasive line.
Today’s another busy one at work, so no full game day notes from me again. I do want to say a few things about last night, though:
Even without the crazy score, that may have been the Wings’ most complete game of the season so far. I can only remember a couple shift-long stretches where the Jackets got anything going. Nothing very sustained. Granted, it’s just Columbus, but they’re not a blow off like they used to be. Very good effort by the Wings. The nine goals were a bonus on top of the real reward of the game: watching the Wings work hard.
Seven different scorers for the Wings last night. Can’t expect that kind of balance every night, obviously, but it was good to see others stepping up. I hope Abdelkader’s two goals have the same effect Eaves’ had (i.e. confidence boost). Ditto for Bertuzzi, whose goal was among the strangest I’ve seen.
As with Jimmy, it’ll be interesting to see how the rest of the team does tonight. I hope they have something left in the tank. The Canucks are battered, but they have Luongo back and that should make things more difficult. I expect he’ll be better than Mason.