Red Wings-Maple Leafs morning skate Tweets and discussion: Toronto dresses its regulars tonight; Wings hold ‘late skate’

Updated at 11:39 AM: The 3-2-and-2 Detroit Red Wings will wrap up their exhibition season this evening, playing against the Toronto Maple Leafs in Hogtown (7 PM EDT start on DetroitRedWings.com/TSN4/ESPN+).

The Red Wings will start Ville Husso this evening (per coach Derek Lalonde), but they’re also going to bring a gaggle of AHL-level players to Toronto, hoping to avenge both Detroit’s 4-3 OT loss to Ottawa on Friday and Detroit’s 2-0 loss to Toronto on Thursday night. Toronto’s going to be dressing a star-studded lineup tonight, so the game will be an uphill climb for the Wings’ young talent.

You might notice that this will be a 3rd game played in 3 nights for the Red Wings, who are wrapping up their 8-game-in-11-night exhibition slate this evening. That’s a lot of games played over a short period of time.

If I may be honest, despite my status as a Wings partisan and as someone who hates it when the cursed Maple Leafs beat the Red Wings, I’ll be relatively happy with any result as long as the Wings don’t suffer any injuries other than sore bodies and mental fatigue from the compressed schedule.

Ken Daniels said during last night’s Bally Sports Detroit broadcast that the Wings will make their cuts on Sunday, and then the team will begin to prepare for Thursday’s season-opener vs. Pittsburgh, starting with Monday’s practice.

Detroit plays 3 games in 5 nights to start the regular season, hosting the Penguins (Thursday) and Predators (next Saturday, October 13th) before heading to Manhattan to visit the Rangers (on Tuesday, October 14th), so the Red Wings are going to get a crash course in playing regular-season hockey against good teams right out of the gate.

Worse, the Wings will host the Rangers, wrapping up “Opening Week,” on the Thursday the 17th, and they’ll head to Nashville to wrap up their season series against Steven Stamkos’ Predators on Saturday the 19th, so the first five games are a real gauntlet for Detroit.

Ultimately, the Wings are going to be playing 10 games in 21 nights this October, consisting of 6 home games and 4 road games, and there’s a back-to-back set on the 26th and 27th. They’re also facing a couple of Wild Card rivals in the Devils and Sabres, and those games will matter down the road.

November’s schedule is just plain weird. The Wings will have two three-day breaks before playing 3 games in 4 nights twice, and the team’s annual California road trip will take place in the middle of the month.

By American Thanksgiving, the Wings will have played 22 games, which should be more than enough time for the team’s 3-headed goaltending monster to get sorted out. I hate to say it, but there will also be some injuries by Thanksgiving, so we’ll see the Wings’ first call-ups from Grand Rapids.

Anyway, tonight’s task for the Red Wings is to defeat the Maple Leafs, despite playing what will be a definite “B Team” lineup vs. Toronto’s constellation of stars. The Leafs hit the ice just before 10:30 AM:

Robertson has something like 5 consecutive preseason goals for the Leafs…

Toronto released its roster for tonight’s game at 10:30 AM. It is predictably stacked, and Ryan Reaves is in Toronto’s lineup, so it’s possible that Auston Watson will be in Detroit’s lineup as a counter-balance:

It appears that Toronto’s without three regulars tonight:

It also appears that the Red Wings did not hold a morning skate, given that they’re playing 3 games in 3 nights here. Instead, we received a Tweet with a Ferris Bueller theme:

Never mind, the Wings did skate this morning! Just quite late for a game day, starting around 11:15 AM:

Meanwhile, in Toronto, we learned of Toronto’s starting goaltender…

So it’s Woll vs. Husso tonight.

Austin Watson is also playing this evening:

Update: Toronto plans on taking tonight’s game seriously:

Update #2: The Wings are holding their post-practice media availabilities:

Update #3: As is Leafs coach Craig Berube:

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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!

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