Well, the Olympics are over and it’s back to the regular season grind.  The Wings are sitting in 10th seed, tied at 68 points with Dallas who has the tie breaker (they had to go all the way to Goals For, strangely, and sadly, Dallas cleaned up in that department), and 1 point behind Calgary.  Colorado is is at 6th with 76 points.  Suffice it to say, it would be great for the Red Wings to start back up on the right foot and get two points in regulation.

Really looking forward to this game–I’m in Colorado right now, and will be making my first ever trip to the Dive.  Should be interesting.  Also, the Wings and Avalanche are the only teams playing tonight, the first day after the Olympics.  Neither of them had more than 1 player in the gold medal game on Sunday (Rafalski and Stastny), and Detroit had one more in Filppula who played on Saturday, along with Babcock from Sunday, but it still seems stupid that they couldn’t schedule it for Tuesday…

The Wings have a (virtually) complete, healthy lineup for the first time this season.  Maltby is officially on LTIR, and Andreas Lilja has been activated, and will play tonight.  It will be interesting to see how many minutes he logs, and also who he plays with.  According to Khan, that will depend on whether or not Rafalski rests or plays tonight.  Here are the two scenarios:

Lidstrom-Rafalski
Kronwall-Stuart
Ericsson-Lilja
Lebda and Meech healthy scratches.

If Rafalski doesn’t play, these will be the pairings:

Lidstrom-Kronwall
Ericsson-Stuart
Lebda-Lilja
Meech scratched.

I’m not going to lie, I’m very excited to see Lilja back in the lineup.  I have hopes that once he gets into NHL game shape, he will be showing some of that shut-down, stay at home defensive play that he was getting good at last year before he got injured.

Howard is starting in net.  Will he be playing at the same level he was before the break, or will his hot hand be cooled a little?  We will see…

Who I’m looking at to have a good game: If he play, Rafalski.  He was so good, both defensively and offensively for Team USA, and he needs to bring that level of play back to Detroit.  Also, Andreas Lilja, for reasons mentioned above, and Jimmy Howard, also stated.

Other Notes:
I know Matt already mentioned this, but Osgood had auctioned off a chance for some kids to come play shinny at his house and backyard rink.  They also got to hang out in his “Man Shack.”  There are a bunch of photos on Facebook, and  the Freep has a writeup of the event.

Brendan Shanahan wrote a couple blogs for NHL.com during the Olympics, with his usual wit, had this to say about Canada’s gold medal win:

Congratulations to all of the Canadian players and management, but especially my buddy Stevie Y. As Executive Director of Team Canada’s gold medal-winning men’s hockey team, maybe a nation will accept that the boy has grown up, and will finally start referring to him as “Steve.”

I doubt it. Way to go Stevie.

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