Wings vs. Blues GP...

Wings vs. Blues @7:30 PM

1. Abdelkader will be centering the second line tonight, which is not bad for a guy who was supposed to be in Grand Rapids this season. He’s played very well over the last stretch of games. How will he look after getting bumped up to the scoring lines?
2. Datsyuk and Lidstrom got points on Sunday against the Rangers. Will finding the scoresheet wake the two of them up from their offensive slumps?
3. Jimmy Howard has created a huge, giant, enormous goalie controversy here in Hockeytown!!! Now that he’s the shiny, new, official, media-anointed starter how will he look tonight? Having to ask that question every night is no fun (but to be fair, I always ask the same of Ozzie), but he still terrifies me in net sometimes.
4. The Wings haven’t exactly been tearing it up at home recently (1-4-1 in their last 7 6 [Thanks to @EtchedInCold for pointing out that apparently nobody bothered to check to see if I could count single digit numbers before they let me into grad school. On the plus side, though, at least I'm still qualified to be an NHL ref.] home games). Can they turn things around and make the home crowd happy?
5. Leino's benched again. In what way will he fail to live up to our expectations for a healthy scratch tonight? It'll take some effort, but I'm sure he'll find a way.

I’m going to be missing at least the first period tonight. I can’t imagine that my group meeting will be done before 8, so I’ll be joining in progress. Also, if anyone wants to steal me a zamboni toy, I would love you forever.

Random side note: Word claims that ‘zamboni’ isn’t a word. This is what the spellchecker suggests instead: hambone, bambini, ambones, mamboing, and sambaing. I had to look up what an ambon was, and nearly got sent back to kindergarten because it took me three tries to realize that mamboing was referring to doing the mambo (and not pronounced mom-boing) and that sambaing was the same thing but with the samba (and not pronounced Sam-bang).