Jiri Hudler and Drew Miller will be healthy scratches tonight when the Wings take on the Carolina Hurricanes at 7:00PM ET from the RBC Center.
For Miller and Hudler, who hasn’t been a healthy scratch since December 19th against Dallas knows this is just part of the regular routine to get everyone playing time before the playoffs start.
“We’re getting close to the playoffs, everybody has to play to get ready,” Hudler said. “The last stretch was a little tougher (for him), but we’re getting closer. A new season starts (next week), an exciting time is coming.”
Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock would agree with Hudler indicating that Hudler and Miller being healthy scratches is just part of the rotation that occurs when you have extra forwards.
“It has nothing to do with anything other than we’re just keeping it moving around, giving guys an opportunity to play with different people, figuring out what’s best for our team,” Babcock said. “So it has nothing to do with what he did or didn’t do. It’s a matter of we got a rotation going. We got extra players, so we’ll figure it out.”
Veteran goalie Chris Osgood, who is still trying to recover from sports hernia surgery back in January still isn’t feeling well enough to play and wont see any action this weekend when the Wings play their final two games of the season.
“Ozzie, to me, unless something’s changed, isn’t in the mix at this point,” Babcock said. “He hasn’t had a net (for practice). Last time he got a net for a couple of days he didn’t practice. I don’t think we’re even thinking about that.”
Osgood is eligible to come off the long term injured reserve list on Friday.
Here are tonight’s anticipated lineups according to Ansar Khan of Mlive.com…
Zetterberg-Datsyuk-Cleary
Franzen-Abdelkader-Bertuzzi
Modano-Filppula-Holmstrom
Draper-Helm-Eaves
Lidstrom-Stuart
Ericsson-Rafalski
Kindl-Salei
Howard (starting)
MacDonald
And for Carolina…
Cory Stillman-Eric Staal-Erik Cole
Jeff Skinner-Tuomo Ruutu-Jussi Jokinen
Drayson Bowman-Brandon Sutter-Chad LaRose
Jiri Tlusty-Patrick Dwyer-Jerome Samson
Joni Pitkanen-Jamie McBain
Tim Gleason-Joe Corvo
Bryan Allen-Derek Joslin
Cam Ward (starting)
Justin Peters
Source: Mlive.com
