The Red Wings now have just 19 games left in the season, limping to the finish line in a historically atrocious season. Tonight they are set to host the Flames at Little Caesars Arena in the last game before the trade deadline, which will be mentioned again in a little bit. The Red Wings will be trying to get back on track tonight following Friday’s loss to the Islanders.

As always, we have a preview featuring the respective lines, as well as three things to watch for:

Filip Hronek is still out with injury and so is Filip Zadina, with Gustav Lindstrom still on the NHL roster. Initially starting out on the first-pair earlier in the week, Lindstrom is listed back on the third-pair. But with Detroit rolling with five barely NHL caliber defensemen and a rookie in Lindstrom, the distinctions between first and bottom pair are very minuscule. The top line of Fabbri-Larkin-Mantha is the only line worth watching on the forwards and Jonathan Bernier and Jimmy Howard continue to trade off in net for the Wings.

The top line of Lindholm-Monahan-Gaudreau remains one of hockey’s better lines, and the Flames boast arguably the league’s most despised player in Matthew Tkachuk on their second line (the arguably is there because Brad Marchand still exists). Mark Giordano is not listed on the line charts, still dealing with a hamstring injury, but is traveling with the team and skating at that. So the Flames may be inching closer towards getting the reigning Norris Trophy winner back on the ice, which would be a huge boost for their playoff hopes.

As said above, this is the final game for the Wings before the trade deadline and there’s still a lot still up in the air. Unlike the last two years in which the Red Wings had some sought after commodities (Tatar in 2018, Nyquist in 2019), it doesn’t appear that Detroit’s pieces are getting a lot of buzz. However, Andreas Athanasiou, Mike Green, Trevor Daley, and Darren Helm could all be on the move ahead of tomorrow’s trade deadline.

It’s unlikely anyone dealt will fetch a lot in return but if there are opportunities to acquire assets, it’s likely that Steve Yzerman will pounce. For the most part, trade value has already been built up and so the events of tonight’s game will not change much in terms of what deals will be made. That said, watching deadline speculation for tonight is simply a matter of potentially watching those players in their final game wearing the winged wheel sweater.

The month of February has not been kind to Detroit’s goal scoring. A complete and total power outage has ensued and sapped the Red Wings of whatever ability to put the puck in the net existed beforehand (and it wasn’t a lot). Here’s a list of goals scored by game for the Wings this month: 0, 0, 4, 0, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1, 4, 1. That’s 17 goals in 11 games, or 1.55 goals per game. Ouch.

Even with the return of Anthony Mantha from injury, the Red Wings’ offense has been toothless, and pairing that with their already NHL-worst defense, this month of hockey has been simply unwatchable. But we fans are always optimistic and the hope is that, at the very least, the offense can reawaken over the final quarter of the season and give fans in Hockeytown something to be slightly entertained with.

Since there aren’t many storylines to discuss with the Red Wings, we can dabble for a minute from the Flames’ perspective. The NHL’s Pacific Division is an absolute mess, with the Flames currently sitting in fourth, yet just four points back of the division lead. With the Oilers, Knights, Canucks, Flames, and Coyotes all jostling for position, every game matters and Calgary has to be entering Detroit tonight knowing that two points is an absolute must.

The Western Conference is lagging behind the east this year in quality, but certainly not in quantity of relevant teams, and this logjam will be fun to watch all the way down to the season’s conclusion.