Red Wings-Wild morning skate Tweets and articles: Howard starts, Ericsson to play, lines tweaked

The Detroit Red Wings face a stiff task in battling the Minnesota Wild this evening (7:00 PM EST on NBCSN/97.1 FM). Both teams are coming off a pair of losses, and the Wild are in a fight for their playoff lives.

Minnesota took to the ice at the Xcel Energy Center before the Wings did, as noted by the Wild’s Twitter account…


Dubnyk: “That’s just not our team…we know what makes us successful. We’ve got to get back to playing hard.”

Boudreau: “You fall off the horse and get back on…we’ll get back to our game.”

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s Sarah McLellan…

Looks like Koivu and Staal are the only ones not on the ice for this morning.

Olofsson and Foligno skating late, so those look like scratches vs. Red Wings.

Also, per The Athletic’s Jessi Pierce:

Looks like no Staal or Mikko on the ice for this morning. Every one else accounted for.

Devan Dubnyk your starter for tonight

Olofsson & Foligno out

Boudreau said both Koivu and Staal are fine & good to go for tonight.

Bruce on tonight’s matchup with : “It’s gonna be a hard fought game because no game is easy anymore.”

And MinnesotaWild.com’s Dan Myers has filed a game preview:

Connections

• Red Wings assistant coach John Torchetti served as the Wild’s head coach for the final 27 games of 2015-16 season after serving as Iowa Wild head coach from 2011-13 and 2014-16.

• Red Wings defenseman Nick Jensen is from St. Paul and played collegiately at St. Cloud State (2010-13).

Playoff push: Minnesota begins the day residing in fourth place in the Central Division and in the Western Conference’s top wild card position. The Wild is tied with the Dallas Stars for third in the Central, but Dallas’ 37 victories — one more than Minnesota — is the current tie breaker.

The Wild stands three points clear of the Anaheim Ducks, the West’s second wild card, and four points better than the ninth-place Colorado Avalanche.

Wing men: Minnesota is 5-3-3 in its last 11 games against Detroit, with seven of those games decided by one goal. The Wild has earned a point in 12 of the past 14 meetings at Xcel Energy Center (6-2-6).

Return to St. Paul: Coming off a pair of tough road losses at Arizona and Colorado, the Wild comes back to the venue in which it’s been nearly unstoppable of late. Minnesota is tied for first in the NHL with 50 home points thanks to a 22-5-6 record at Xcel Energy Center.

The Wild has notched points in 24 of 26 home games since Nov. 14 and leads the NHL in home points (43) during that span (19-2-5 record).

The Wild Public Relations also revealed tonight’s announcers:

The Red Wings hit the ice for their morning skate around 10:30 AM local time, or 11:30 AM EST, per the Free Press’s Helene St. James…

DetroitRedWings.com’s Dana Wakiji…

#RedWings in morning skate: Bertuzzi-Zetterberg-Nyquist Abdelkader-Larkin-Mantha

Athanasiou-Nielsen-Helm

Witkowski-Glendening-Booth (Frk working in)

Ericsson-Daley

DeKeyser-Jensen

Kronwall-Green

#RedWings Howard in starter’s net.

#RedWings Ericsson expects to play although not feeling 100% yet.

#RedWings Howard confirms he is playing tonight.

The Red Wings…

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan also said, “Hello”:

 

FYI:

 

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, and have worked with MLive and Kukla's Korner. Thank you for reading!