Wings beat Wild as injuries mount

The Wings got back to form tonight by rolling past the Minnesota Wild 4-1 from the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul Minnesota.
Henrik Zetterberg had a goal and and assist for the Wings while Danny Cleary, Tomas Holmstrom and Kris Draper were the other goals scorers for Detroit.
Minnesota, who were coming into this game relatively hot winning their past three games couldn’t muster a lot of offense. Brett Burns had the Wild’s lone goal on a power play late in the game.
The Wings were able to get on the board early after Zetterberg was able to put away a rebound off Wild goalie Niklas Backstrom at the 4:38 mark. Danny Cleary tallied another one for Detroit at the 8:59 mark when he was able to deflect the puck off Backstrom’s skate and into the back of the net.
Wing’s goalie Jimmy Howard was rarely tested tested tonight, a welcomed sight after the Wings allowed four goals in each of it’s last four games. Howard now has 19 wins on the season which ties him for the leagues most with Montreal goaltender Carey Price.
Despite the win, the Wings did receive some bad news after the game.
X-rays revealed that the Wings’ leading scorer Danny Cleary fractured his ankle after taking a shot from teammate Brad Stuart in the third period.
“It’s broken,” Cleary said. “A month at least.”
“It hurt. I was hoping (it was) a bad bruise,” Cleary said. “I didn’t know what was going on. It was sore. I knew after the game something was wrong.”
According to Ansar Khan of Mlive.com, Cleary’s injury will not require surgery and will be fitted for a walking cast for the remainder of the teams road trip.
To make up for the loss of Cleary, the Wings recalled forward Jan Mursak from the Grand Rapids Griffins. He is scheduled to make his NHL debut Monday night when the Wings travel to Denver to take on the Colorado Avalanche.
After coming off an injury riddled season last year, the Wings hoped to remain relatively healthy this season.
This however is not the case.
Danny Cleary joins injured Wings’ Pavel Datsyuk who will be out around 4 weeks with a fractured hand and Mike Modano who will be out until March with a lacerated forearm.
Detroit who has strong pretty much all season really needs their 3rd and 4th liners to stop up in the absence of Datsyuk, Modano and now Cleary. Jiri Hudler still only has one goal in 30 games so far this season and is a minus-8. This is a far cry from what he was two years ago and it was expected that he would come in and provide a spark to the third line. Filppula, who can be a second line forward only has 8 goals on the season and 19 points. He (Filppula) did have a tally the other night against the Canucks however he is another player that needs to get going this season.
Source: Associated Press, Mlive.com