The Detroit Red Wings look for back to back wins in as many days

It isn’t precisely the Sakic, Forsberg and Claude Le-puke’s Colorado Avalanche coming into town but nevertheless, it is still the Avs’ logo on the front of the sweater. They are in town to square off with the Detroit Red Wings tonight.

The Wings look to win in back to back nights and extend the win streak to three. Jonathan Bernier will get the challenge tonight for the Detroit Red Wings against his former team tonight in Motown. Bernie started 34 games last season for the Avs’ and recorded 19 wins before skipping town, heading to Detroit on a three-year deal this past July.

Bernier has struggled at times with the Wings especially early on in the season and again recently over his last two appearances allowing six goals over his previous five periods of work. Prior to the last two games, he had a string of three above-average starts.

He will be facing a fast, extremely skilled Avalanche team. In fact, Colorado has the top two scorers in the NHL. Mikko Rantanen has 43 points to lead the NHL and stand-out center Nathan MacKinnon currently has 41 points to his name which is good for second in the league.

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The pair of forwards will be an extremely tough matchup for Mike Green and Niklas Kronwall to neutralize. Danny DeKeyser and Nick Jensen I expect will have a few opportunities to oppose the star Avs’ forwards as well. As much as I love Dennis Cholowski, he and Jonathan Ericsson should stay far, far away from the top line of Colorado tonight.

The Detroit Red Wings are 11-4-1 over their last 15 games and a lot has to do with the recent success of Tyler Bertuzzi. Bertuzzi is on absolute fire of late, expect Jeff Blashill to roll that third line out with confidence. Bert is playing with Rasmussen and Glendening, for the most part, have been an above average third line. Tyler has 7 points over his last seven games.

A key matchup will be the Avs’ power-play which ranks first in the NHL with a 31.4% conversion rate. The Detroit Red Wings penalty kill will need to make sure they are in the shooting lanes, pressuring the puck handler, and taking away the time and space of the Colorado skilled players. The Wings PK was once a top 10 unit league-wide, but have fallen to 17th over the last couple of weeks. They are only killing 79% of their shorthanded misfortunes.

The Wings are expected to field the same lineup as they did last night in Boston meaning they will roll three centers through four sets of wingers. If they indeed decide to have the same lineup, Luke Witkowski will draw into the lineup once again as the seventh defenseman.

Jeff Blashill likes to roll three centers because it allows him to get the skilled players all a few extra shifts throughout the night. Larkin, Nielsen, Glendening will all play down the middle, but Blash will rotate double-A as a center here and there getting him some extra ice. Also de La Rose will get some work down the middle with a pair of checking wingers.

By doing this, it allows Vanek to play a few shifts with a skilled center rather than leaving him buried on the fourth line with a couple of checkers.

The Detroit Red Wings projected lineup;

Justin Abdelkader (A) – Dylan Larkin (A) – Anthony Mantha

Andreas Athanasiou – Frans Nielsen (A) – Gustav Nyquist

Tyler Bertuzzi – Luke Glendening – Michael Rasmussen

Jacob de La Rose – Thomas Vanek

Niklas Kronwall (A) – Mike Green

Danny DeKeyser – Nick Jensen

Jonathan Ericsson – Dennis Cholowski

Luke Witkowski

Jonathan Bernier

Jimmy Howard

Healthy Scratches: Christoffer Ehn, Martin Frk

Injuries: Trevor Daley (lower-body), Darren Helm (upper-body), Evgeny Svechnikov(knee)

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Game Information:

Detroit Red Wings 12-11-3 vs. Colorado Avalanche 15-6-5
Time: 7:00 EST
Location: Little Caesars Arena, Detroit, MI
TV: Fox Sports Detroit, Altitude, Fox Sports Go, NHL.TV, ESPN+
Radio: 97.1 The Ticket
OddsShark Odds- Fav. Col -165
Head to Head last 10 – Colorado 6-4-0

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