WGD: GAME 56: RED WINGS @ WILD

The Red Wings will wrap their difficult three-game road-trip up this afternoon in Minnesota. 

Talk about a tough trip. It wasn’t a long trip, but it started with the top team in the NHL in Washington (39-11-6), followed by the second best team in the Eastern Conference in Columbus (35-14-5) last night and now they’re in Minnesota and the Wild are the second ranked team in the NHL and first in the Western Conference (36-12-6). As of Sunday those teams are a combined 110-37-17, (.723 P%) which is just insane. 

It is hard to fault the Red Wings for losing the first two games of the trip, but it dropped them to 2-4-4 in their last 10 games and that isn’t going to get you into the playoffs. Despite the loss last night, the Red Wings actually played well. They fired 36 shots at Sergei Bobrovsky, but the Russian netminder stood on his head and turned aside 35 of them to preserve the 2-1 win for Columbus. 

Now the Red Wings are in Minnesota to take on a red-hot Wild squad. The Wild have gone 6-1-1 in their last eight games and they’ve averaged a really strong 3.63 goals for and 2.50 goals against over that span. The Red Wings haven’t caught any breaks on this short trip either. They faced the NHL’s best goalie in Braden Holtby on Thursday, a top-5 netminder in Bobrovsky last night and today they will most likely see Devan Dubnyk, who is tied with Bob for the NHL lead in Wins and is also tied with Jimmy Howard for the lead in GAA (1.96) and SV% (.934) and he’s started 27 more games that ‘Howie.’

The Red Wings are not expected to willingly make any lineup changes, but they could be without Thomas Vanek, who is battling an ankle injury. Vanek briefly departed last night’s game, but was able to return and finish the game and even nearly tied it up late. Vanek was waived and bought-out by this very same Wild team last year, so you have to believe that he wants to badly play against them today. 

That Vanek-Darren Helm–Andreas Athanasiou line has played well recently, but had a tough time last night, while the Gustav Nyqvist–Henrik Zetterberg–Anthony Mantha line was once again their best. Nyquist and Mantha led the way with a 58.82 CF% at 5-on-5 and Zetterberg was fourth among forwards with a 52.5 CF%. In contrast, AA was at 20.0 CF% and both Vanek and Helm were under 30.0 CF%. I would expect a better effort out of that third line today, a line that appears to be the key to their success, especially because their two leading scorers are on it. 

The Wild are on-fire, specifically Mikael Granlund. He recently had a 12-game point streak snapped, but has 35 points (10G / 25A) in 30 games since December 7th, which is tied for second in the entire NHL—trailing only Nicklas Backstrom. Nino Niederreiter and Eric Staal are both tied in the top-20 with 26 points each over that same stretch. 

They have three deep scoring lines, which make them extremely difficult to match-up with. The Wild have 10 players with double-digit goals, which goes to show just how deep their scoring depth is—Niederreiter (18), Mikko Koivu (16), Staal (16) and Jason Zucker (16) lead the way. 

Their blueline will be without a key member as Jonas Brodin continues to work his way back from a fractured finger. However, this unit is stabilized by Ryan Suter, who is second in the NHL averaging 27:17 TOI/GM. The Wild blueline may have the best player you’ve never heard of and that’s Jared Spurgeon. He’s undersized but he does everything well and is on-pace for a career offensive-year. 

Petr Mrazek started last night and was excellent, stopping 37 of 39 shots in the loss, but there is a very high chance that it is Jared Coreau tonight. Mrazek would be making his third start in four days and because of the early start it doesn’t seem feasible to have him play again. The aforementioned Howard isn’t expected to skate until Monday, so he won’t be ready to go until next week. As for Coreau, it would be his first start since January 31st and he comes in at 5-2-3 with a 3.01 GAA, .901 SV% and two shutouts. 

As I mentioned, it will almost certainly be Dubnyk for the Wild. The 30-year-old stopped 26 shots in a 2-1 shootout win over the Lightning on Friday and he’s won three in a row while stopping 88 of 94 shots (.936 SV%). He’s played well all season-long and will be tough test for the Red Wings. 

Puck drop is at 3:00pm at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. You can watch the game on NBC. If you can’t watch the game you can listen to it on 97.1 FM The Ticket. 

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