Time: 7:30 Eastern
Place: Little Caesar’s Arena, Detroit, MI
TV: Bally Sports Detroit
Radio: 97.1 FM The Ticket // 1270 AM
Lightning Blog: Raw Charge
Welcome back, folks, to and all-new, all (sort of) different Red Wings season, just like the all-new, all-different Giant Size X-Men #1 comic that came out in 1974. Like that X-Men in that comic, the Wings are led back into relevancy by their leader, Dylan Larkin, which I guess makes Yzerman into Professor X, and I think a decent chunk of the fan base would agree that he can read minds, so this extended metaphor definitely still works and isn’t tired or niche at all.
The Wings open the season at home to the dreaded Tampa Bay Lightning. With the newly constructed roster, we should expect to the Wings to put up a better fight against these guys than they have in the past few years (although the rare wins against Tampa have been some of the sweetest moments of the past two seasons.)
The Wings host new faces in wingers Lucas Raymond and Carter Rowney, centers Pius Suter and Mitchell Stephens, defensemen Nick Leddy, Moritz Seider, and Nick Oesterle, and goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic. Maybe it takes all these new faces some time to gel, or maybe the hockey gods smile on us early and there is a lot of intuitive clicking on the Red Wings’ bench. Let’s hope for the latter, as the Bolts will still be a tough contest every time they face Detroit this year.
We can dissect the team a lot more after tonight, so far now let’s just get excited that we’ve got some hockey to watch! LGRW!!