Time: 7:00 Eastern
Place: Little Caesars Arena, Detroit MI
TV: BSDET, MSG+
Radio: 97.1 FM The Ticket // 1270 AM
Islanders Blog: Lighthouse Hockey
It’s Grateful Dead night at the LCA tonight, but as far as I know the Wings will only be wearing their traditional Red & Whites. Wouldn’t hurt for them to add a touch of grey, would it?
Oh well; I will get by.
In bigger news, the Wings pulled Danny DeKeyser off COVID protocol yesterday and had Joe Veleno skating with the second line. This matches up with Thursday’s roster moves that saw Dan Renouf and Kyle Criscuolo returned to Grand Rapids (although Renouf hadn’t been playing).
At this point I’m not sure what exactly to expect on the back end. According to Ansar Khan(!!!), DK and Oesterle were taking turns paired with Seider. It would make sense that Oesterle would go back to being the scratch out of the six that have played these last few games, but personally I’d rather see 82 than 65.
Oh well, on to the Isles.
New York returned to play on Thursday after having two games postponed by COVID. They lost in overtime to the Sharks 2-1. That earned them their first standings point since the 6th of November when they beat Winnipeg 2-0. They’ve lost nine straight since then and sit at the bottom of a Metropolitan Division that’s going to be hard to climb, even if they do have games in hand on the rest of the conference right now.
As a team, New York is hard to score on but has found difficulty generating offense. Their power play is last in the league right now while their PK is middle-of-the-pack. They still have guys like Brock Nelson and Mathew Barzal who can score in bunches.
With Detroit having won four straight and the Isles limping in, this one has trap game written all over it.