Detroit Red Wings prepare to face the mighty-less Ducks of Anaheim

On military appreciation night at Little Caesars Arena, the Detroit Red Wings host the struggling Anaheim Ducks. At the moment it is a great thing they’ve recently dropped the words “Mighty” from their name. They’ve been anything but…

The Detroit Red Wings are coming off a terrific performance in Minnesota. A team meeting after the loss in Winnipeg and prior to the game in Minny seemed to spark one of the better team performances of the season. Hopefully, it carries over against an Anaheim Ducks club that is currently reeling with pain, having gone winless in their last 11 games.

One thing that stands out during this ugly stretch of hockey for the Ducks although they’ve gone winless over the past 11 contests somehow they remain a game over .500. That is shocking to me. They currently own a 19-18-9 record.

Ducks nation (the fans) haven’t been too fond of head coach Randy Carlyle, and that goes back to the beginning of the season before this terrible stretch of hockey began. Sound familiar? We are going through the same thing here with the Detroit Red Wings. We can’t say everyone wants to see head coach Jeff Blashill replaced, but it is safe to say the majority of fans do. The same goes for the bench boss in Anaheim.

There is one big difference between the two fan basis. The Ducks crew had, and still, have playoff hopes for the season. As much as we wished our Detroit Red Wings were playoff bound, we knew before the season started that it would be a stretch to make it. We knew to make it in we would need a few overachieving players.

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Although we’ve found some young players we like, for example, Dennis Cholowski, Filip Hronek, and Michael Rasmussen we haven’t had a player make a significant franchise changing splash just yet. Some of us expected Filip Zadina to possibly be that difference maker right away; it’s turned out he isn’t ready yet. The splash may just come next year that many had hoped for in 2018.

The Ducks have a terrific netminder in John Gibson. Gibson owns a 15-14-8 record with a 2.75 GAA and a .919% Save percentage. He’s having an outstanding season but similar to Jimmy Howard he struggles to find consistent help in front of him.

Similar to the Ducks netminder representing them, Howard will represent the Detroit Red Wings in the NHL all-star game later this month. His stats will shock Ducks fans who consider Gibson, their savior. I get it, he’s good. He better be good after signing his contract extension over the summer. The 25-year-old Gibson signed an 8-year, 51.2 million dollar deal that kicks in at the start of next season.

Howard owns a 12-12-5 record with a 2.77 GAA, and a .916% save percentage. Nearly a carbon copy of the statistics Gibson has recorded. Jimmy has picked a good time to peak; he’s set to become a free agent on July 1st. He’s playing his way into one last nice payday.

He might be playing his way out of Detroit if other teams come calling in July. Goaltending is sparse across the league this season, a lot of teams will be looking for both short and long term answers in net. This could play well for Ken Holland and the Red Wings after the all-star break. They will be listening to offers on Howard as the season grows old.

The Ducks don’t really have any players who stand out. They are once again led by their leader Ryan Getzlaf. He leads the team in assists (21), and points (31). He also remarkably still averages 20:06 TOI minutes per game.

The former Windsor Spitfire Adam Henrique is second on the team with 25 points in 46 games. Players like Rikard Rakell, Ondrej Kase, and Pontus Aberg are all nice prospects but all have failed to be a “difference” maker YET. The key word is yet. We’ve seen the same thing in Detroit with Mantha, Athanasiou, and Bertuzzi in the past. Our three youngsters are all a year advanced on the offensive side of things.

A couple keys to the game:

The most important thing will be starting on time. We’ve fallen into this terrible habit of starting games and periods a couple of minutes late and falling behind early. If the Wings can survive the first minute or two and come out as aggressive as they did in Minnesota things will go well for them tonight.

Danny DeKeyser is expected to return to the lineup. This helps the back-end for the Wings. They’ve struggled to exit their own zone without chipping it to center ice which ends up on the stick of the opponent who simply sets up another attack. If they don’t chip it out we seem to just send the puck the length of the ice for icing, preventing us from changing and forces us to chase fresh bodies around for another shift in our own zone.

DeKeyser helps with his ability to skate the puck out of trouble. I have a gut feeling Jeff Blashill will elect to roll with 7 defensemen and 11 forwards. If that isn’t the case tonight they will once Daley returns to the lineup, tonight they may elect to scratch Hronek and insert Danny. They should scratch Ericsson but the franchise has been reluctant to do so in the past and I don’t see that changing.

Hronek has played much better during his second stint with the Detroit Red Wings, I would like to see the team decide to keep him up this time and look to move a veteran defender via trade. They are rebuilding, draft picks are cherished and we could afford to move someone, allowing Hronek to become a regular in the lineup. Michael Rasmussen was placed on (IR) to open a roster spot for DeKeyser, the Wings hope to have Michael back for the weekend.

I don’t know exactly what the Wings will do with their lineup. I will feel sick if they sit Hronek. I think the kid has shown he deserves to play at this level. I think they will consider sitting Ehn and running seven D, so that’s how I am going to write it out.

The Detroit Red Wings projected lineup:

Tyler Bertuzzi – Dylan Larkin (A) – Gustav Nyquist

Thomas Vanek – Frans Nielsen (A) – Anthony Mantha

Darren Helm – Luke Glendening – Andreas Athanasiou

Jacob de La Rose – Justin Abdelkader (A)

Niklas Kronwall (A) – Mike Green

Danny DeKeyser – Dennis Cholowski

Nick Jensen – Jonathan Ericsson

Filip Hronek

Jimmy Howard

Jonathan Bernier

Healthy Scratch: Martin Frk, Luke Witkowski, Christoffer Ehn

Injuries: Trevor Daley (lower-body), Evgeny Svechnikov (knee) Michael Rasmussen (day-to-day)

Next. Looking at some of the good that 2018 produced. dark

Game Information:

Detroit Red Wings 17-23-7 vs. Anaheim Ducks 19-18-9
Time: 7:30 EST
Location: Little Caesars Arena, Detroit, MI
TV: Fox Sports Detroit, Fox Sports Go, NHL.TV, ESPN+
Radio: 97.1 The Ticket
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