The Detroit Red Wings continue their homestand on Black Friday as they come off one of their worst losses of the season when being defeated 6-3 by the last place Nashville Predators this past Wednesday. It extended the Red Wings losing skid, holding them to just five wins over their last 13 games. They now will face off against a Tampa Bay Lightning team that is white hot and has overtaken the Atlantic division lead with five straight wins entering Friday.
Detroit will look for a big bounce back game in a divisional showdown that could close the gap for the top seed to just one point with a Red Wings win. Head coach Todd McLellan has been experimenting with their bottom-six forward lines in the hopes of sparking offense.
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Marco Kasper will be given another chance in the top-six as he moves up back up to his spot on the second line where he start the season with Alex DeBrincat and the red hot James van Riemsdyk. Rookie Nate Danielson will hope to get more out of two struggling veterans in Patrick Kane and Andrew Copp on the third line while the bottom line will look very different with Michael Rasmussen drawing back in to play alongside the returning J.T. Compher, who was recently out with an illness, and Mason Appleton.
Meanwhile, top-line stars Lucas Raymond, Alex DeBrincat, and captain Dylan Larkin continue to produce at a high level. On the back end, everything will mostly stay the same except they will still be without Simon Edvinsson, as he is sidelined with likely the same illness that sidelined Compher.
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For Tampa, the focus has been finding more secondary scoring as they find themselves in a similar spot to Detroit. The top end talents in Jake Guentzel and Nikita Kucherov have been split up to create two deadly scoring lines while they’ve been getting help further down the lineup from depth players like Zemgus Girgensons and Oliver Bjorkstrand.
Detroit will need to watch for Kucherov’s consistent impact, while captain Dylan Larkin remains the key player for the Red Wings, heating up with recent points and an impressive record against Tampa Bay. In goal, John Gibson is expected to start for Detroit, facing a future Hall-of-Fame netminder in Andrei Vasilevskiy, who has historically had strong numbers versus the Red Wings.
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Detroit Red Wings’ Expected Line Combinations vs. Tampa Bay (Friday):
Finnie – Larkin – Raymond
DeBrincat – Kasper – van Riemsdyk
Copp – Danielson – Kane
Rasmussen – Compher – Appleton
Chiarot – Seider
Benard-Docker – Sandin-Pellikka
Johansson – Hamonic
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