Red Wings-Maple Leafs morning skate Tweets and articles: No Komarov for Toronto; Witkowski draws in for Detroit

Updated 2x at 12:34 PM: The Detroit Red Wings will battle the Toronto Maple Leafs this evening (7:00 PM EST on FSD/CBC/97.1 FM), with the Red Wings hoping to derail some of the Leafs’ pre-playoff momentum by stealing a win at the Air Canada Centre.

The Maple Leafs hit the ice at the ACC before the Red Wings, as noted by TSN’s Kristen Shilton…

Leo Komarov is the only absentee at #Leafs morning skate. Appeared when I arrived around 9 am this morning that someone had already been skating, I’m assuming that was probably him.

#Leafs lines at morning skate: Hyman-Matthews-Nylander Marleau-Kadri-Marner

van Riemsdyk-Bozak-Brown

Johnsson-Plekanec-Kapanen

Leivo, Moore, Martin

Rielly-Hainsey

Gardiner-Zaitsev

Dermott-Polak

Carrick

Andersen McElhinney

And TSN’s Mark Masters:

Leafs lines at morning skate

Hyman-Matthews-Nylander

Marleau-Kadri-Marner

JvR-Bozak-Brown

Johnsson-Plekanec-Kapanen

Martin, Moore

Rielly-Hainsey

Gardiner-Zaitsev

Dermott-Polak

Leivo-Carrick

Andersen

McElhinney

TOR will play six of final eight regular season games at ACC

TorontoMapleLeafs.com’s Paul Hendrick went the concise route:

No lineup changes for the Leafs tonight it appears.

After the Leafs’ morning skate, Babcock bristled about advanced stats, as noted by NHL.com’s Dave McCarthy…

Babcock on Roman Polak: “The other night when he ran over one of their best players, DJ Smith said to me, ‘What’s the corsi rating for that’.”

The Red Wings hit the ice for their morning skate just before 11:30 AM, per DetroitRedWings.com’s Dana Wakiji…

The Red Wings…

The Free Press’s Helene St. James…

And the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan, who’s already looking forward to the off-season:

No surprises here, per DetroitRedWings.com’s Wakiji:

#RedWings morning skate:

Bertuzzi-Zetterberg-Nyquist

Mantha-Larkin-Helm

Athanasiou-Nielsen-Abdelkader

Frk/Booth-Glendening-Svechnikov

Ericsson-Daley

DeKeyser-Jensen

Kronwall-Witkowski

Ouellet extra

#RedWings PP units: Bertuzzi-Zetterberg-Nyquist-Abdelkader-Kronwall;

Frk-Larkin-Nielsen-Mantha-Daley

Also, from NHL.com’s McCarthy:

Update: after the morning skate…

Fox Sports Detroit also said, “Hello”…

Update #2: The Leafs’ YouTube channel posted clips of Mitch Marner…

And Auston Matthews:

 

 

Also of Red Wings-related note: According to Sportsnet, the Leafs are “heavy favourites” over the Wings in terms of sports betting;

The Athletic’s Prasanth Iyer penned a superb article about the Red Wings’ penalty-killing unit, but it only really “works” in conjunction with the embedded photos and videos, so I can’t really offer a good “set-up” preview here;

And the Midland Daily News reports that Red Wings alumnus John Ogrodnick will serve as a special guest at a Mid Michigan Community Foundation event on April 22nd;

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, when MLive hired me to work their SlapShots blog, and I joined Kukla's Korner in 2011 as The Malik Report. I'm starting The Malik Report as a stand-alone site, hoping that having my readers fund the website is indeed the way to go to build a better community and create better content.