The Blue Jackets take their home ice for the first time tonight, giving the fans a chance to see their first game action for “the new guys” of the season. Coming to town are the Detroit Red Wings, reeling from a 6-0 beat down in St. Louis on Saturday.
This Wings club–if ever there was a time–is ripe for the picking tonight. They looked slow on defense on Saturday, their PK was atrocious, and they’re a M.A.S.H. unit right now with no Darren Helm, no Todd Bertuzzi, no Jakub Kindl, and no Jan Mursak. Also missing tonight will be backup netminder Jonas Gustavsson, who hurt his groin in practice. The Jackets, conversely, have no one on their injury report.
Columbus was effective by driving the forecheck in the second and third periods, by capitalizing on the Power Play early, and by a decent-if-not-pretty defensive effort in front of Sergei Bobrovsky. The Bob was also good when he had to be, allowing no goals in the final two periods and overtime to give his team a chance to not only tie, but take a lead.
The Wings still have their skill up front, but without Nicklas Lidstrom all of a sudden look pretty bad on defense. The Jackets will need to work hard and to capitalize on that tonight.