Gorilla Crouch

All the Detroit NHL franchise needs now is to use the Griffins jerseys. Darryl Bootland will join the squad as Tomas Holmstrom will miss some gametime due to an upper body injury.

In addition to Grand Rapids alumni who are regulars in the Detroit lineup (Niklas Kronwall and Brett Lebda), Matt Ellis, Matt Hussey, Josh Langfeld, Bootland and Jimmy Howard are currently on the Detroit roster. So that will take a bit of luster off of a matchup tonight against the Nashville Predators, as they also have numerous key players injured who will likely not play in the game. It’s great for the younger players to get ice time in the NHL but when 1/3 of your forwards are minor leaguers it just isn’t the same as seing Henrik Zetterberg and Peter Forsberg on the ice, or David Legwand and Tomas Holmstrom.

The teams have split their four games to date, with the home team winning each game. In the Free Press article I linked to at the beginning of the post indicates Dominik Hasek should be back by this weekend. Mikael Samuelsson is very close to being ready to play.

Otherwise I think there is a clear benefit to getting guys healthy and there is some benefit to forcing the team to play at less than full-strength and see how they respond. They simply didn’t respond in the game against Colorado. Hopefully they put in a better effort tonight.

March 6th, 2007
Categories: Red Wings . Author: Dave

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