Game Thread: Flames at Red Wings

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It's game day again, if you can muster up the courage to watch this team again after what we all went through on Saturday night. There are some important questions for the Flames going into this one, like exactly how ancient is Daniel Cleary? And who the heck is Tomas Tatar? The Wings have some injuries up front at the moment including Mikael Samuelsson and Darren Helm, which has forced them to call up some depth players like Tatar and bump Damien Brunner onto the top line. Of course the big story line tonight is Hudler's return to Detroit, where he scored a career-high in goals with 25 in 2011-12.

Detroit still boasts a formidable offence with the likes of Zetterberg, Filpulla, Datsyuk, and Franzen, but at least Thomas Holmstrom won't be around to stick his ass in Miikka Kiprusoff's face tonight--it's not much but Kipper needs all the help he can get right now. The Wings defence is obviously missing the retired NIcklas Lidstrom as former Flame Ian White slots into the top four.

Here are the expected lines and pairings for tonight's contest:

Wings:

Damien Brunner - Henrik Zetterberg - Johan Franzen

Tomas Tatar - Valtteri Filpulla - Pavel Datsyuk

Todd Bertuzzi - Justin Abdelkader - Daniel Cleary

Drew Miller - Cory Emmerton - Jordin Tootoo

Niklas Kronwall - Jonathan Ericsson

Kyle Quincey - Ian White

Kent Huskins - Brian Lashoff

Jimmy Howard

Flames:

Mike Cammalleri - Alex Tanguay - Jarome Iginla

Curtis Glencross - Mikael Backlund - Lee Stempniak

Jiri Hudler - Matt Stajan - Roman Cervenka

Blake Comeau - Blair Jones - Steve Begin

Mark Giordano - Jay Bouwmeester

TJ Brodie - Dennis Wideman

Derek Smith - Chris Butler

Miikka Kiprusoff

Cory Sarich and TIm Jackman are scratches for the Flames tonight, which is somewhat interesting as Tootoo now has few unlikely sparring partners unless he manages to sufficiently piss off Iginla or someone, in which case he may get the snot beat out of him. Jackman went off for repairs after a fight in Saturday's game but I'm not sure that has anything to do with his absence tonight. Defenceman Anton Babchuk is traveling with the team but is not yet ready to play, thankfully.

Go Flames Go.