A bevy of quick updates — despite Coach Babcock’s insistence that “anyone who can’t play Wednesday can’t play Friday,” the Red Wings will turn to Jimmy Howard to start tonight’s game against the Nashville Predators. There goes my thought that they’d be concerned he’d get run against the likely first-round opponent. Perhaps Ty Conklin’s less-than-inspiring (SURPRISE!) performance against the Blue Jackets rendered this decision a no-brainer, since all of the remaining will likely matter for playoff seeding and home-ice.
Continuing with the game-day news, MLive’s Ansar Khan reports that Kyle Quincey will be a healthy scratch tonight, making way for Jakub Kindl to return to the lineup. We breached the question during the Columbus game: how do we feel about Quincey 2.0 a dozen games in? “A hell of a lot worse than we did after 1 game” was the consensus response. Babcock says there’s nothing to this move and that he wants to get all of the lower-tiered defensemen rotated in to prep for the post-season. Jonathan Ericsson, meanwhile, will continue to lumber around the ice doing nothing of value.
Gustav Nyquist, who only played five minutes while relegated to the fourth line on Wednesday, will maintain his place in the lineup. There’s no word which forward will be a healthy scratch tonight (it was Jan Mursak two days ago), but here’s hoping Goose can get more than a few minutes to show what he’s capable of and continue to contribute as he had been when on a scoring line.
I’m ok with Goose on the fourth line if a) he’s centering it and b) he still gets close to 10 minutes of ice time.
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