The Red Wings will wrap-up a historic back-to-back-to-back set tonight in Carolina. The Red Wings have made your typical back-to-back look pretty easy, beating the Wild and Hurricanes in overtime so far, but they will need to beat the Hurricanes again tonight to make it three wins in three days. Even though the games don’t matter and they would be better off losing these games, winning three wins in three days would pretty impressive.

Detroit was pretty badly outplayed last night, but their young stars Anthony Mantha, Andreas Athanasiou and Petr Mrazek were able to lead them to victory. Athanasiou scored the OT game-winner for the second straight night and join Corey Perry as the only players in NHL history to score their first and second career OT goals on consecutive days.

Yesterday’s win did a lot of damage to the Hurricanes playoff chances and Detroit will look to play spoiler again tonight.

Detroit Red Wings Lines via DailyFaceoff

The Red Wings’ lineup will look differently than it did last night. Tomas Nosek is expected to draw back into the lineup to replace Luke Glendening, who is dealing with a lower-body injury. After resting last night, Niklas Kronwall will be back in tonight which means Daniel Renouf was return to Grand Rapids (AHL). Ben Street was called up under emergency conditions this morning, but there’s no word whether or not he will play. Given it’s their third game in as many nights, Jeff Blashill could elect to give a veteran a night off. However, don’t expect it to be Henrik Zetterberg, because he is expected to play in his 1,000th career NHL game in the season finale, which is also the final game at Joe Louis Arena.

The Red Wings struggled early in the season, but this team could have been in playoff contention if their top players were playing like this in December. This team was expected to be led by Tomas Tatar and Gustav Nyquist, but both struggled in the first half of the season. Each of them have turned it on lately, but it’s too little too late. Tatar has recorded six goals and two assists (eight points) in his last seven games, while Nyquist has 13 points (3G / 10A) in his last 12 contests.

With these recent hot stretches, both Tatar and Nyqvist’s numbers on the season look very similar to what they did a year ago, but they have been far too inconsistent, especially earlier in the campaign.

Carolina Hurricanes Lines via DailyFaceoff

Since the Hurricanes outplayed the Red Wings for the majority of last night’s contest, there likely won’t be any significant changes to their lineup tonight.

Justin Faulk had a great game last night, scoring twice on a whopping nine shots—giving him 16 goals and 197 shots on the season. Faulk is one of the best offensive-defenseman in the NHL, but the Hurricanes are loaded with talented young blueliners. Jaccob Slavin had two assists last night, giving him 14 points (3G / 11A) in his last 16 games. Former fifth overall pick, Noah Hanifin has eight points (1G / 7A) of his own over the month and Brett Pesce continues to take big strides.

In order to win again tonight, the Red Wings will have to slow Jeff Skinner down. He opened the scoring last night, extending his goal streak to six games—tallying eight goals over that span. He is red-hot and is now just two goals off of his career-high (33) set in 2013-14.

Jimmy Howard is expected to be between the pipes for Detroit. The Red Wings have been rotating their goalies since Howard returned and it has worked out very well. Howard has won his last three starts and is 4-1-0 with a 1.78 GAA and .936 SV% since returning from his injury. He has not faced the Hurricanes this season, but is 4-3-0 with a 2.15 GAA and .930 SV% on the road.

Cam Ward sat and watched last night’s game as well, but Eddie Lack was stretched off of the ice after Athanasiou’s game-winner, so Ward will get the crease tonight. Rookie Alex Nedeljkovic was recalled from the ECHL to serve as Ward’s backup this evening. Ward has gone 16-8-4 with a 2.46 GAA and .914 SV% on home ice this season.

There was a lot of concern for Lack at the end of last night’s game, but the Hurricanes announced that he was released from hospital with a neck strain and is doing well. The Red Wings showed a lot of class by remaining on the ice while the medical staff attended to Lack and the Swedish netminder appreciated the gesture.

Puck drop is at 7:00 p.m. ET at PNC Arena, Raleigh, NC. You can watch the game on Fox Sports Detroit-PLUS and if you can’t watch the game you can listen to it on 97.1 FM The Ticket.

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